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THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS: 

fflTRODUCTORY  STUDIES, 
CRITICAL,  BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PHILOSOPHICAL. 

993 

By  GEOEGE  S.  MOKRIS,  AM., 

LECTURER   ON   nULOSOPHY  IN   THE    JOHNS  HOPKINS  UNIVERSITY,   BALTIMORE; 

TRANSLATOR  OF   UEBERWEG'S   "HISTORY   OP  PHILOSOPHY,"   AND 

ASSOCIATE  OF  THE  VICTORIA  INSTITUTE,  LONDON. 


CHICAGO: 
S.   C.   GRIGGS   AND    COMPANY. 

1880. 


COPTBIOHT,  1880, 

By  S.  C.  GRIGGS  AND  COMPANY. 


i^A 

I     XKtSH-r  'it  li:SNARD'    I 


DONOHUE  <fc  IlZNNEBERRY,  BINDERS. 


3 
ill! 

MG3 


PKEFAOE 


The  first  eleven  chapters  of  this  volume  are  founded, 
with  slight  changes  (consisting  mainly  in  amplification 
of  the  theoretical  portions  of  chapters  VII,  IX  and  X),  on 
"public  lectures"  recently  delivered  before  a  mixed 
audience  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  at  the  Johns  Hopkins 
University,  Baltimore.  Simultaneously  with  their  de- 
livery, another,  more  extended  and  technical,  course,  on 
the  history  of  British  speculation  from  Bacon  to  Spencer, 
was  in  progress,  attended  only  by  university  students. 
To  this  course,  the  lectures  here  in  substance  repro- 
duced were  partly  introductory,  while  in  part  they  were 
intended  to  present  a  general  summary  of  results  reached 
and  illustrated  in  more  profuse  detail  in  the  special 
course. 

From  the  foregoing  statements  the  scope  and  pur- 
pose of  this  volume  may  be  inferred.  It  is  introductory, 
rather  than  exhaustive  —  an  invitation  to  reflective  and 
systematic  study,  rather  than  a  substitute  for  it.  At 
the  same  time,  I  hope,  by  the  expression  of  deliberate 


4  PREFACE. 

and  reasoned  opinions,  to  have  pointed  the  way  to  cor- 
rect views  concerning  the  essential  nature  and  value  of 
the  most  conspicuous  current  of  abstract  thought  in 
the  English  language.  I  have  not  thought  it  needful 
to  make  radical  changes  in  the  style  by  which  the  ma- 
terial here  employed  was  first  adapted  for  use  in  the 
lecture-room.  The  large  biographical  element  in  more 
than  half  of  the  chapters  will  not  be  unwelcome  to 
those  who  realize  that  a  thinker's  life  is  one  of  the  in- 
dispensable keys  to  the  due  appreciation  of  his  thought; 
and  I  cannot  but  confidently  wish  that  some,  through 
the  allurements  of  biography,  may  be  won  over  to  the 
serious  contemplation  of  the  grand  problems  of  philo- 
sophic thought  and  to  a  quickened  sense,  both  of  their 
dignity  and  of  their  absolute  and  vital  import. 

By  the  addition  of  a  chapter  on  Herbert  Spencer  the 
main  thought  of  the  volume  is  followed  out  of  the  Brit- 
ish past  into  the  immediate  present. 

GEORGE   S.  MORRIS. 

Ann  Arbor,  Mich.,  September  14,  1880. 


OOI^TEI^TS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

'     Intboductoey. —  General    Philosophical    Attitude 

OF  THE  English  Mind ' 

CHAPTER  IL 

'  Medieval  Anticipations  of  the  Modern  English 
Mind. —  John  of  Salisbury,  Roger  Bacon,  Duns 
Scotus,  William  of  Occam      ...         -         30 

CHAPTER  III. 

'   Englishmen  of  the  Renaissance. —  Edmund  Spenser, 

Sir  John  Davies,  Richard  Hooker  -         -         53 

CHAPTER  IV. 

William  Shakespeare  —  Poet-Philosopher     -         -         80 

CHAPTER  V. 
Francis  Bacon       -         -         -         -        -         -         -114 


6 


C0NTEKT8. 


CHAPTER  VI. 
Thomas  Hobbes      -----..       14.1 

CHAPTER  Vn. 
John  Locke igg 


CHAPTER  Vin. 
Geoboe  Berkeley  ----..      202 


CHAPTER  IX. 
David  Hume  -         -         .         . 


234 


CHAPTER  X. 
Sia  William  Hamiltox 265 

CHAPTER  XL 
John  Stuart  Mill         - qqo 

CHAPTER  Xn. 
Herbert  Spencer  -        -        -        .        .        .       aon 


BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS, 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTOKY. 

GENERAL  PHILOSOPHICAL  ATTITUDE  OP  THE  ENGLISH 

MIND. 

Schopenhauer  made  a  familiar  thought  famous  by 
putting  it  in  a  simple  but  striking  and  epigrammatic  form. 
Die  Welt  ist  rneine  Vorstellung,  said  he.  The  M'^orld  is  for 
me  an  idea.  It  is  a  representation  in  my  mind.  To  how- 
many  of  us  has  not  this  thought  occurred,  with  something 
of  a  dazing,  dreamy  effect,  as  we  have  mused  on  the  com- 
plete dependence  of  our  idea  of  the  universe,  or  all  that 
therein  may  be,  on  our  own  minds !  I  can  remember  how, 
as  a  mere  boy,  more  than  once,  in  an  evening  reverie,  an 
experience  somewhat  in  this  vein  came  to  me.  All  my 
boyish  ideas  of  things  seemed,  as  pure  creations  of  my 
own  fancy,  to  melt  away,  and  there  remained,  as  the 
whole  sum  and  substance  of  the  universe,  only  the  ab- 
stract, but  otherwise  empty  and  uninstructive,  and,  by 
any  law  of  sufficient  reason,  inexplicable,  necessity  of 
being,  plus  a  dull,  confused,  and  yet  thoroughly  unique, 
and  for  this  reason  indescribable,  sensation,  as  of  a 
chaos  of  shapeless  elements,  moving  noiselessly  among 
each  other  —  a  plenum  of  scarcely  greater  value  than 

7 


8  BRITISH   THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

an  absolute  vacuum.  Then  came  the  return  to  what 
is  termed  the  literal  fact  of  experience,  or,  better,  to 
the  world  such  as,  under  the  influence  of  a  dawning 
mental  activity,  guided  by  sensitive  experience  and  by 
instruction,  it  had  actually  shaped  itself  in  my  imagina- 
tion —  the  earth,  with  its  green  fields  and  forest-covered 
mountains,  the  world-inhabited  heavens,  the  changing 
seasons,  man  and  his  past  history  and  unrevealed  earthly 
destiny,  not  to  mention  the  myriad  little  and  familiar 
things  which  would  necessarily  crowd  the  foreground  of 
such  a  picture  in  a  boy's  mind.  The  view  which  a  mo- 
ment before  had  demonstrated  so  signally  its  capability  of 
dissolving,  recovered  its  relative  consistency  and  became 
again  a  slowly-changing  panorama  of  a  world,  or  of  "Me 
world,"  as  it  was  for  me.  It  was  into  such  a  conception 
of  a  world  —  a  conception  kaleidoscopic,  apparently  half 
arbitrary,  half  accidental  —  that  I,  following  unwittingly 
a  bent  common  to  the  universal  mind  of  man,  was  more 
or  less  blindly  seeking  to  introduce  order  and  permanence. 
What  must  be?  Why  must  anything  be?  Why  must  all 
things  be?  Such  a  rock  of  rational  necessity  as  a  success- 
ful answer  to  these  questions  would  have  furnished  I  was 
(though  unconscious  of  the  full  significance  of  my  striv- 
ing) seeking,  in  order  to  arrest  and  fix  the  quicksands  of 
a  Vorstellung,  or  idea  of  the  universe,  of  which  I  only 
knew  (with  Schopenhauer)  that  it  was  mine.  I  need 
hardly  say  that  the  immediate  result  of  my  reflections  was 
tolerably  negative.  I  have  indicated,  iiowever,  in  the  nar- 
ration of  this  experience,  the  elements  of  a  j)rublem  which 
presents  itself  to  mankind  in  all  climes  and  ages.  It  is, 
if  I  may  so  express  it,  to  effV-ctuate  a  sort  of  rational 
anatomy  of  existence,  or,  at  least,  of  our  ideas  of  it.    The 


INTRODUCTORY.  9 

sea  itself  would  not  move  in  billowy  motions  if  it  had  no 
fixed  boundaries.  The  blood  flows  in  tracks  marked  out 
in  veins  and  arteries.  The  soft  and  yielding  flesh  adheres 
to  a  firm  framework  of  bone.  So  man  would  find  in  his 
whole  conception  of  things  the  skeleton  of  rational  neces- 
sity, about  which  the  multifarious  or  apparently  fortu- 
,  itous  elements  of  that  conception  may  group  themselves, 
or  the  rather,  by  which  the  order  of  their  grouping  is 
determined.  The  "idea"  which  was  but  a  changing  pic- 
ture in  the  imagination  —  a  representation  —  must  change 
to  an  idea  which  shall  be  a  rational  type,  a  self-evidencing 
law,  an  all-sufficient,  all-explaining,  all-necessitating  rea- 
son. The  varying  and  inexplicable  element  furnished  in 
sense  and  sensuous  imagination  must  crystallize  in  the 
majestic  forms  of  eternal  thought,  of  reason  divine.  It 
is  this  mental  work  which  Goethe,  in  noble  lines,  at- 
tributes to  the  angels  who  constitute  the  "  heavenly 
hosts."  The  gracious  benediction  and  command  which 
the  Divine  Being  addresses  to  them  runs  thus: 

"Das  Werdende,  das  ewig  wirkt  und  lebt, 

Umfass'  euch  mit  der  Liebe  holden  Schranken, 
Und  was  in  schwankender  Erscheinung  schwebt, 
Befestiget  mit  dauernden  Gedanken!" 

Prolog  im  Himmel:  Faust. 

Thus  the  world  which  was  "my  idea"  (in  Schopen- 
hauer's phrase)  is  to  be  transformed,  in  its  measure,  into 
the  image,  or  rather  into  a  participation,  of  the  divine 
idea  of  the  world.  The  evanescent  is  to  give  way  to  the 
permanent.  The  passive  reception  of  appearances  is  to 
give  place  to  an  active  apprehension  of  realities. 

1  have  thus  stated,  in  outline,  the  grand  and  compre- 
hensive   motive    Avhich   underlies   all   finite   thought  as 


10  BRITISH  THODOHT  AND  THINKERS. 

such,  and  which  therefore  reveals  itself,  clearly  or  ob- 
scurely, in  all  the  thought  of  man.  It  were  easy  to  show, 
in  detail,  how  it  governs  at  once  the  systematic  inquiries 
of  philosophical  speculation,  the  exact  inquiries  of  phys- 
ical science,  and  the  freer  intuitions  of  poetic  fancy,  as 
well  as,  also,  the  sober  contemplations  of  history.  Nor 
would  it  be  more  difficult  to  show  that  in  this  presup- 
posed ideal  of  stable  Truth  —  believed  to  be  attainable  for 
man:  else  why  and  how  strive  after  it?  —  moral  and 
aesthetic  elements  are  intrinsically  involved.  But  to  at- 
tempt this  here  would  be  to  go  aside  from  the  purpose 
of  our  present  inquiry,  as  well  as  to  repeat  a  labor  already 
well  performed  by  others.  My  object  now  is  only  to 
direct  attention  to  the  universally  observable  fact  that 
men,  finding  themselves  in,  or  in  possession  of,  a  mental 
world,  which  is  at  first  (as  regards  their  own  insight)  so 
largely,  or  exclusively,  subjective,  variable,  phenomenal 
(and  so,  to  use  Kant's  metaphor,  like  a  restless  ocean), 
believe  in  a  continent  of  objective,  stable  Truth,  think 
that  they  have  glimpses  of  it,  seek  to  approach  it,  and 
set  up  way-marks  (in  their  literature  and  institutions) 
of  their  progress  toward  it,  and  by  their  notions  (or 
knowledge)  of  it  form  their  judgments  as  to  the  signifi- 
cance and  value  of  human  life  and  history,  and  of  the 
physical  universe  itself.  And  it  is  through  the  different 
notions  which  the  men,  the  thinkers,  of  an  epoch,  a  race, 
a  clime,  a  great  nation,  form  and  express  concerning  the 
geography  of  this  continent,  through  the  spiritual  colors 
of  which  they  profess  to  have  caught  glimpses,  the  max- 
ims of  hope,  of  conviction,  or  of  despair,  sorrowful,  reck- 
less, or  even  blasphemous,  which  they  have  inscribed 
upon  the  guide-posts  set  up  by  them;  it  is  through  all 


INTEODUCTORT.  11 

these,  and  through  other  signs  flowing  from,  or  otherwise 
necessarily  connected  with,  these  that  the  peculiar  com- 
plexion, the  special  attitude  or  tendency  of  the  thought 
of  a  particular  epoch  or  nation  is  known  and  judged. 

Or,  to  put  the  case  otherwise,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
ward  off  the  suggestion  that  this  philosophical  view  of  it 
is  too  remote  from  the  actual  state  of  some  of  the  facts 
involved :  is  it  not  true  that  all  literature,  all  art,  all  civil 
and  social  institutions,  are,  in  their  fundamental  measure, 
like  philosophy  and  science,  interpretative  and  explana- 
tory ?  Does  not  the  epic  poet,  who  sings  of  human  deeds, 
weave  all  the  elements  of  his  story  into  one  high  align- 
ment, whether  of  fate,  free-will,  or  providence  ?  and  is  it  not 
the  argument,  binding  the  isolated,  transient  deeds  of  heroes 
and  tribes  in  the  network  of  an  organic,  rational  whole, 
merging  the  individual  in  the  universal,  the  accidental 
in  the  necessary,  by  which  both  the  singer  and  his  hearers 
are  rapt  ?  Does  not  the  tragic  poet  perform  a  like  func- 
tion on  the  stage  ?  Even  the  lyric  poet,  when  he  bodies 
forth  some  feeling  of  the  breast  within,  passes  judgment 
upon  the  feeling,  i.e.  he  assigns  to  it  a  definite  value ; 
he  explains  it  by  putting  it  into  relation  to  something 
other  and  deeper  than  itself;  and  this  he  does,  if  not  in  so 
many  formal  words,  yet  in  the  very  form  and  color  of 
his  utterance.  The  true  artist  is  at  once  nature's  critic 
and  interpreter.  The  wise  law-giver  is  the  critic  and 
interpreter  of  human  nature.  Each  looks  beneath  the 
surface.  Each  is  a  diviner.  Each  exhibits  a  law  or  type 
extracted  from  the  heart  of  the  nature  of  things  or  of 
man,  that  nature's  veriest  self,  its  true  self,  at  all  events 
a  standard  whereby  the  unworthiness  or  inadequacy  of 
the   ideas   contained  in   our   accidental,  every-day,  con- 


12  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

scioiisness  is  condemned  or  corrected;  a  light  which  re- 
veals the  world  and  life  in  profundities  of  meaning,  or 
in  a  brilliancy  of  coloring  previously  unknown. 

Man  is  mind,  is  spirit,  and  all  of  the  products  of  these 
his  characteristically  spiritual,  i.e.  human  activities,  in- 
cluding his  religious  faiths  and  convictions  (not  pre- 
viously mentioned),  imply  an  order  of  explanations  point- 
ing beyond  the  mere  or  first  Vorstellnug,  or  impression, 
to  a  somewhat  by  which  first  impressions  are  corrected, 
to  norms  of  truth  and  judgment  independent  of  subject- 
ive or  purely  individual  prepossessions.  They  all  more 
or  less  completely  refer  the  seen  to  the  unseen,  or  to  that 
which  at  first  is  not  seen.  They  would  have  sight  yield 
to  insight.  To  the  truth  of  this  statement  even  mate- 
rialistic explanations  (so  far  as  they  are  professedly  sys- 
tematic or  philosophical)  form  no  exception  ;  for  they  all 
agree  in  finding  the  ultimate  element  or  ground  of  reality 
in  the  invisible  atom. 

By  all  that  has  gone  before  I  iiave  simply  been  setting 
forth  familiar  signs  and  products  of  the  idealism  innate 
in  the  universal  mind  of  man.  Nay,  rather,  why  do  I 
not  say,  without  qualification,  the  idealism  which  is  in- 
nate in  Mind,  the  universal  source  and  "king  of  being"; 
of  which  latter,  man,  being  in  liis  essence  an  express  and 
conscious  participant,  of  necessity  shares  in  the  former. 
So  putting  the  case,  I  make  it  more  evident  that  the 
idealism  of  human  nature  is  no  accident,  but  a  constitu- 
ent and  necessary  element  of  human  nature;  nay,  more,  is 
that  which  essentially  constitutes  it.  For  how  should 
Mind  not  have  faith  in  itself?  —  and  Idealism  is  just  this 
faith.  How  should  Mind  not  know  itself?  —  and  Ideal- 
ism is  just  this  knowledge.    Further,  Mind  is  conscious 


INTRODUCTORY.  13 

intelligence.  Intelligence  is  an  active  function,  not  sim- 
ply a  passive  'possession;  strictly  passive,  it  were  no 
longer  intelligence,  for  then,  inactive,  it  would  not  have 
intelligence  of  itself.  Still  further,  intelligence  is  only  of 
the  intelligible.  Reason  apprehends  only  what  is  ra- 
tional. Mind,  therefore,  can  comprehend  no  world  which 
is  not  permeated  with  its  own  attributes ;  the  absolutely 
unintelligible,  irrational,  being  inconceivable  and  hence 
utterly  incapable  of  being  brought  into  relation  to  mind, 
is  for  it  no  better  than  the  non-existent.  Mind  seeks 
itself  therefore  in  the  universe,  chiefly  in  forms  of  law, 
order,  purpose,  beauty.  It  must  reduce  its  conception  of 
the  universe,  given  first  in  the  form  of  isolated,  unex- 
plained impressions,  to  the  order  and  harmony  of  a- 
rational,  and  hence  explicable,  apprehensible  whole.  And 
this  search,  this  necessity,  of  Mind,  again,  precisely  is 
idealism.  Finally,  and  most  characteristically  of  all, 
man  seeks  and  finds  himself  only  in  the  realization  of  an 
ideal,  the  Idea  of  Man,  as  perfected  in  truth,  goodness, 
and  love.  He  is  therefore  thus,  and  immediately,  in  pro- 
portion to  the  perfection  of  his  manhood,  a  living  text 
and  lesson  of  Idealism. 

Such  is  the  law,  such  is  the  universal  tendency,  such 
is  the  inherent  necessity  of  Mind.  The  exceptions  are 
purely  apparent,  phenomenal.  For  knowing  mind  all 
reality  is  ideal,  either  strictly  and  intrinsically,  or  at 
least  functionally  and  typically.  Of  the  whole  import  of 
this  truth  few  are  fully  conscious.  Some  expressly  deny 
it  171  terms.  Millions  ignorantly  or  wantonly  crucify  it. 
And  yet,  though  the  thought  of  brief  epochs,  or  of  cer- 
tain individuals  or  classes  of  individuals,  may  have  borne 
formal  but  false  witness  against  it,  the  exception  thus 


14  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

apparently  constituted  is  far  from  sufficient  to  invalidate 
the  universal  law:  all  the  great  literatures  of  the  world, 
the  thought  of  every  nation  which  has  been  a  grand 
power  in  the  history  of  civilization,  has  been  deeply,  and 
from  the  very  necessity  of  the  case,  idealistic. 

In  considering  the  question  concerning  the  peculiar 
direction  of  any  particular  nation's  thought,  the  only 
question,  from  this  point  of  view,  can  be,  whether  the 
idealistic  tendency  is  more  or  less  marked  and  intense 
—  not  whether  it  be  present  or  absent. 

But,  as  has  been  seen,  the  idealism  of  man  crops  out 
in  different  forms  of  intellectual  activity  and  productivity, 
as  in  literature  and  religion,  art  and  society  and  govern- 
ment. Moreover,  it  is  characterized  in  different  cases  by 
unessential  but  interesting  differences,  according  as  it  is 
peculiarly  attracted  in  the  several  cases  by  various  forms 
or  signs  of  the  ideal,  such  as  law,  fitness  of  adaptation, 
goodness,  order,  beauty.  Thus  among  the  Romans  we 
find  a  peculiar  reverence  for  law,  among  the  Greeks  a 
passionate  love  of  the  beauty  of  limit  and  proportion,  and 
among  the  Hebrews  a  regard  for  moral  goodness  or  right- 
eousness. Or,  again,  the  idealism  of  which  we  speak  may 
be  specially  characterized  by  the  degree  and  manner  in 
which  the  ideal,  regarded  as  the  power  and  substance  of 
reality,  is  conceived.  It  may  be  referred,  in  the  conse- 
crated language  of  a  revealed  and  accepted  religion,  im- 
mediately to  the  power  of  God,  with  no  attempt  to 
understand  or  to  render  rationally  intelligible  how  God  is 
its  author.  Or  its  reality — the  truth  of  the  dogma  that 
it  alone  has  reality,  and  that  even  in  the  most  lifeless 
stone  the  measure  of  reality  is  proportioned  to  the  ideal- 
ity typically  or  intrinsically  present — may  be  perceived, 


tNTRODUCTOR"?.  15 

admitted,  enforced,  without  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
ideality  is  inexplicable  apart  from  living  personal  mind 
as  its  cause  and  constant  supporter.  Then  we  have  the 
various  forms  of  philosophical  hybridism  —  pantheism  in 
its  protean  forms,  intellectual  naturalism,  certain  phases 
of  mysticism,  doctrines  of  an  impersonal  idea,  an  uncon- 
scious but  ideal  something,  underlying  or  accounting  for 
the  world.  These  are  illustrated  in  certain  Oriental 
phases  of  thought  and  imagination,  which  also  have  their 
notable  analoga  in  the  history  of  European  philosophy, 
ancient  and  modern.  They  mark  a  certain  logical  incom- 
pleteness in  thought,  and  infect,  in  a  measure,  the  specu- 
lations of  some  who  would  utterly  reject  the  mystical 
pantheism  to  which  they  conduct.  (I  have  elsewhere 
pointed  out  how  this  is  true  of  Aristotle's  physical  con- 
ceptions, in  The  Tlieory  of  U)iconscious  Intelligence  as 
opposed  to  Theism.  London,  1876,  pp.  6-8.)  These  views 
easily  lend  themselves  to  poetic  treatment,  and  are  very 
common  in  the  poetic  literature  of  ancient  and  modern 
times.  Finally,  the  ideal,  considered  as  present  through- 
out the  universe,  the  source  of  its  intelligibility  and  the 
very  essence  of  its  reality,  may  be  clearly  and  consistently 
grasped  as  itself  inexplicable  and  absurd  unless  viewed  as 
the  direct  expression  of  living,  personal  mind.  Man  has 
no  exact  conception  of  an  idea  apart  from  a  mind  which 
possesses  it.  He  cannot  conceive  rationality  except  as  the 
attribute  and  living  function  of  a  mind  or  spirit.  The 
rationality  found  in  nature  is  therefore  an  ahsurdum 
unless  viewed  as  the  direct  or  indirect  effect  and  function 
of  self-conscious  spirit.  The  idealism  (in  theory)  which 
holds  fast  to  these  axioms,  acknowledges  God,  whose 
rational  power  and  wisdom  it  detects  in  all  things.   Mind, 


16  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

which  can  only  be  conceived  as  living  and  conscious  and, 
in  its  perfection,  as  rooted  and  acting  in  forms  of  truth 
and  goodness,  love  and  beauty,  becomes,  for  this  theistic 
idealism,  the  acknowledged  and  self-evident  king  of  the 
universe.  And  so  man,  in  his  humble  way,  is  brought 
into  direct  and  sympathetic  relation  with  the  universal, 
all-pervading,  all-explaining  Power.  The  theoretical  ex- 
pression of  this  idealism  may  be  in  terms  identical  with 
the  language  of  a  monotheistic  religion,  the  only  differ- 
ence being  that  he  who  affirms  the  former  must  do  so  on 
the  ground  of  an  explicit  philosophical  conviction,  while 
the  latter  may  be  simply  accepted  without  this  conviction, 
but  on  other  more  or  less  good  and  sufficient  grounds. 

I  say,  then,  that  the  question  as  to  the  peculiar  com- 
plexion or  tendency  of  a  nation's  thought  is  a  question  as 
to  the  peculiar  stripe  of  its  idealism.  A  materialistic 
habit  of  thought  is  not  native  to  the  human  or  to  any 
other  full-grown  mind,  for  mind  is  simply  deceived  when 
it  thinks  it  sees  and  understands  in  or  concerning  matter 
anything  but  the  reflection  (liowover  dim)  of  its  own 
perfections.  Further,  a  nation's,  like  an  individual's, 
thought  is  judged  by  the  conceptions  current  in  it  con- 
cerning the  world,  life,  and  man.  Without  the  interest, 
perennial,  inexhaustible,  which  attaches  to  such  concep- 
tions, imagination  itself  would  lose  its  glow,  and  the 
subtler  hues  of  thought  and  feeling  would  become  fitful, 
fatuous,  unmeaning,  or  rather  would  sink  into  a  dull  and 
leatlen  monotone  of  lifeless  color.  Nor  does  it  make 
matters  any  clearer  —  the  rather  it  confuses  them  —  to 
disguise,  or  seek  to  disguise,  the  fact,  that  the  questions 
which  revolve  about  these  conceptions  are  strictly  philo- 
sophical ones,  and  that  every  characteristically  spiritual 


INTRODUCTORY.  17 

activity  of  man,  in  its  products  in  literature,  art,  polity, 
social  organism,  civilization,  strictly  imply,  and  in  their 
measure  exhibit,  a  philosoj^liy  of  human  life  and  of  the 
whole  universe  of  human  thought  or  knowledge.  At  the 
same  time  I  scarcely  need  to  say  that  the  individual 
men,  or  even  nations,  in  whose  thought  and  works  the 
foregoing  truths  are  illustrated,  may  have  no  definite 
consciousness  of  the  fact  that  they  are  virtually  philoso- 
phizing. They  may  even  feel  and  profess  a  decided 
repugnance  to  philosophical  speculation,  strictly  and 
technically  so  called. 

Precisely  this  is  the  case  with  the  English  mind,  whose 
first  and  most  prominent  characteristic  may  perhaps  be 
described  as  consisting  in  this,  namely,  that  its  interest  is 
far  more  concentrated  upon  the  vital  and  practical  side  of 
truth  than  upon  the  abstract  or  theoretical  side.  Truth, 
in  its  living,  effective  power,  so  absorbs  its  attention  that 
little  care  is  left  for  inquiries  concerning  its  ultimate 
grounds  and  guarantees,  or  for  laborious  exactness  in 
the  statement  of  it.  Possession  is  nine-tenths  of  the  law. 
The  English  nation  possess  genuine  character.  Char- 
acter is  vitalized  truth.  In  their  national  character  the 
English  possess  a  body  of  such  truth,  in  the  power  and 
through  the  inspiration  of  which  they  have  been  enabled 
to  work  out  (during  a  period  of  1200  years)  an  historical 
destiny  of  the  most  honorable  and  glorious  kind.  Faith 
in  this  truth  is  faith  in  themselves.  To  relinquish  it 
would  be  moral  suicide  —  to  doubt  of  it,  moral  treason. 
Its  warrant  is  found  in  its  historic  power,  in  its  present 
vitality.  This  truth  the  English  possess,  or  perhaps  it 
were  truer  to  say  that  it  possesses  them  ;  and  possession, 
I  repeat,  is  nine-tenths  of  the  law.  Under  these  circum- 
1* 


18  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

Stances  inquiry  concerning  the  remaining  one-tenth,  the 
validity  of  the  title  by  which  possession  is  held,  may 
naturally  appear  to  a  "  practical  people  "  idle,  and  almost 
frivolous. 

The  only  other  nation  known  to  Occidental  history, 
which  has  possessed  anything  like  so  palpable  and  con- 
sistent a  character  as  the  English,  namely  the  Romans, 
in  like  manner,  and  even  in  a  more  marked  degree,  were 
remarkable  for  their  almost  absolute  neglect  of  abstract 
speculation.  Their  old-fashioned  reverence  for  law  and 
duty,  and  their  self-respect,  were  ideal  forces  which 
wrought  in  them  and  through  them,  and  fitted  them 
for  the  rough  and  solid  work  of  world- subjugation.  No 
wonder  that  they  felt  a  greater  interest  in  the  practical 
solution  of  living,  flesh-and-blood  problems,  which  the 
progress  of  events  forced  upon  them,  than  m  their  theo- 
retical explanation.  If  the  ideal,  which  is  the  only 
essential  side  of  human  nature,  has  a  really  sustaining 
support  and  source  of  constant  nourishment  in  a  sterling 
national  character,  it  is  by  no  means  an  obviously  super- 
ficial question  to  ask  why  human  nature  should  bother 
itself  continually  about  such  subtilties  as  the  ultimate 
constitution  and  ground  of  existence,  the  abstract  con- 
ditions and  laws  of  perfect  humanity,  the  sources  of 
moral  obligation,  the  meaning  of  beauty's  charms,  the 
intrinsic  value  of  human  life.  Certainly,  to  err  through 
neglect  of  such  matters,  for  such  a  reason  —  and  not, 
for  example,  like  the  Spaniards  of  the  last  two  centuries, 
by  reason  of  mental  indolence  and  effeminacy  —  is  a 
noble  error.  Such  error,  you  may  say,  is  the  sign  of  a 
peculiar  naivettf.  It  marks  a  nature  so  complete  in  itself, 
a  nature  which  finds  such  reason  to  be  satisfied  with 


INTRODUCTORY.  19 

itself,  that  it  never  occurs  to  it  to  ask  farther  questions. 
Granted;  but  genuine  naivete,  if  a  mark  of  relative  child- 
hood in  understanding,  is  also  a  mark  of  fresh  and  har- 
monious wholeness,  and  that  relative  naivete,  which  comes 
from  an  obstinate  shutting  of  the  eyes  in  certain  direc- 
tions, may  produce  a  similar  effect.  Certain  it  is  that 
this  happy,  unbroken  wholeness  (if  not  completeness) 
of  the  English  character  has  naturally  extorted  the 
admiration  of  other  nations,  in  whom  the  harmony,  or 
harmonious  correspondence,  between  inward  thought  and 
aspiration,  and  material  and  historical  condition,  is,  or 
has  been,  far  less  perfect  than  in  the  case  of  the  English. 
Heine,  in  a  well  known  epigram,  ascribed  to  the  English 
the  empire  of  the  sea,  to  the  French  the  empire  of  the 
land,  and  to  the  Germans  the  empire  of  the  air.  The 
"sea,"  which  the  English  rule,  we  will  interpret  as  the 
whole  ocean  of  concrete  existence,  moral  and  physical. 
The  "land,"  of  the  French  rule,  shall  denote  the  clear 
and  exact  (though  incomplete)  analysis  of  ideas.  (Com- 
pare Taine,  Art  en  IfaJie,  1866,  pp.  18,  19.)  The  "air" 
in  which  the  Germans  are  at  home  will  then  be  the 
region  of  ideal  speculation,  of  ultimate  causes  and 
reasons.  Now,  if  the  criterion  of  a  valuable  existence  be 
placed  in  its  historic  zvdacp.o'Aa,  or  "fortunateness,"  how 
much  more  fortunate  has  not  the  English  people  been 
than  the  French  or  German !  The  French,  exercising 
their  analytic  talent,  formed  very  definite,  sharp-cut 
ideas  of  the  rights  of  man  ;  but  sought  with  hopeless, 
unintelligent  energy,  through,  one  might  almost  say,  dozens 
of  revolutions,  to  give  them  practical  realization.  The 
Germans,  with  unsurpassed  penetration  and  comprehen- 
sion,— as  of  the  problems  of  universal  existence  in  general, 


20  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

SO  of  the  grounds  and  elements  and  worth  of  an  organized 
political  life  in  particular, — yet  presented  till  recently  the 
most  lamentable  spectacle  of  national  disintegration  and 
impotence.  From  this  point  of  view  one  easily  appreci- 
ates the  force  of  an  utterance  like  the  following,  on  the 
part  of  a  German,  writing  twenty  years  ago  (Emil  Feuerlein, 
Philos.  Siltenlehre,  in  ihren  gesch.  Hauptformeii.  2.  Theil, 
p.  9,  Tubingen,  1859).  "Naive  in  the  nobler  sense,"  says 
this  writer,  "appear  to  him  who  becomes  acquainted  with 
a  man  like  the  Englishman  in  his  home  and  in  his  voca- 
tion, those  marks  of  a  solid,  pithy,  morally  undissevered 
nature,  the  breath  of  which  a  stranger  feels  in  the  whole 
English  atmosphere.  Has  no  German  in  this  air  ever 
felt  as  though,  through  the  vision  of  a  moral  force  so  in 
harmony  with  itself,  he  might  and  would  gladly  be  healed 
from  his  own  [moral  and  political]  disunity  and  dis- 
memberment, and  in  the  enjoyment  of  this  more  natural 
world  be  restored  to  inward  soundness?''  It  is  no  wonder 
that  in  the  midst  of  all  the  aspirations  and  agitations 
and  revolutions  through  which  the  continental  nations 
of  Europe,  during  the  last  century,  have  sought  to  im- 
prove their  political  condition,  the  example  of  England  — 
its  constitution,  its  vigorous,  self-poised  life,  its  diame- 
ter—  has  been  the  sometimes  unacknowledged  but,  more 
frequently,  openly  avowed  guiding-star.  Such  an  ex- 
ample is  a  veritable  inspiration,  since  it  is  the  outcome 
of  ideal  forces  —  the  only  real  ones  and  the  only  ones  that 
can  act  upon  man.  Tiiese  forces  are,  in  this  case,  con- 
scious self-knowledge,  self-restraint  and  self-assertion,  tlie 
first  conditions  of  strictly  human  life,  whether  in  indi- 
vidual or  in  nation. 

Yet  let  no  one,  from  the  facts  now  presented,  draw  an 


INTRODUCTORY.  21 

over-hasty  conclusion  as  to  the  uselessness  of  such  thor- 
ough mental  work  as  the  Germans  have  done  and  as  the 
conception  of  philosophy  universally  contemplates.  Ger- 
many, as  a  nation,  appears  to-day  in  quite  another  light 
than  that  which  surrounded  it  twenty  years  ago.  And 
he  is  a  sorry  and  short-sighted  seer  who  does  not  discover 
the  first  and  final  cause  of  its  recent  remarkable  exhibi- 
tion of  concentrated  moral  and  physical  power  in  the 
intellectual  and  moral  Gedanken-arheit,  or  travail  of 
thought,  which  has  been  going  on  in  German  climes  for 
the  last  two  hundred  years.  During  all  this  time  the 
Germans  have  been  making  their  character.  In  an  emi- 
nent sense  this  character  is  their  creation,  and  hence,  by 
an  indefeasible  title,  their  possession.  It  now  bears  its 
fruit,  shows  its  power.  And  history  has  yet  to  show 
whether  such  a  character,  and  the  commanding  power 
which  results  from  it,  are  not  more  inalienable  and  inde- 
structible than  a  character  which,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Romans  and  English,  is,  largely,  simply  accepted  as  a 
natural,  but  otherwise  inexplicable,  gift  —  m  a  measur- 
able degree  an  accidental  and  unconscious,  rather  than  a 
conscious,  possession.  Theoretically  considered,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  it  is  to  the  former  that  the  inheritance 
of  the  earth  in  the  long  run,  by  inherent  rational  neces- 
sity, belongs.  Were  it  not  that  I  perceive  in  the  history 
of  English  thought  and  in  the  English  mind  the  signs 
and  elements  of  a  far  more  than  ordinary  purely  intel- 
lectual and  moral  vitality,  I  should,  for  one,  certainly 
look  for  a  far  less  glorious  future  for  the  empire  of  Eng- 
lish thought,  and  consequently  for  English  power  and 
influence  in  general,  than  I  now  anticipate. 

If  the  record  of  the  English,  namely,  in  the  history 


22  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

of  philosophy  proper,  is  not  a  shining  one,  if,  indeed, 
they  have  no  properly  national  philosophy  at  all  which 
can  be  called  either  deeply  and  thoroughly  or  even  bril- 
liantly reasoned,  yet  they  have  solid  endowments,  which 
have  been  influential,  and  in  some  directions  splendid, 
in  their  past  fruit,  and  which  are  quite  sufficient  to 
justify  substantial  hopeful  expectations  for  the  future. 
The  strong  or  marked  sides  of  the  English  mind  are 
three,  the  religious,  the  scientific  and  the  poetic.  Relig- 
ion and  science,  in  different  ways,  furnish  problems  to 
philosophy.  The  poetic  faculty,  the  power  of  creative 
imagination,  is  the  pledge  of  speculative  ability. 

On  the  religious  side  the  English  share  with  their 
Teutonic  ancestors  and  neighbors  in  a  certain  depth  and 
sincerity  of  spirit,  which  is  opposed  to  all  sham,  is  never 
long  satisfied  with  mere  appearance,  admits  no  separation 
of  substance  from  form,  and  demands,  along  with  a 
formal  assent  to  the  doctrines  proposed  to  faith,  an  in- 
ward experience  of  the  power  of  truth,  accompanied  by 
appropriate  works.  In  other  words,  the  English  are 
genuinely  religious.  This  appears  throughout  their 
whole  history.  The  tone  of  aspiration,  of  adoration,  of 
deep,  sometimes  fierce,  religious  earnestness,  which  is 
struck  in  what  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  terms  the  *' first 
true  English  poem,"  the  poem  of  Caedmon,  reappears  in 
all  the  critical  epochs  of  the  development  of  English  life, 
and  has  thoroughly  permeated  English  manners  and  lit- 
erature. The  key-note  of  the  Reformation  was  struck  in 
England  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  no  nation  has 
been  more  tenacious  in  maintaining  its  fruits  than  the 
English.  But,  it  need  not  be  said,  a  genuine  religious 
spirit  is  necessarily   idealistic.     It    carries   with    it   the 


INTRODUCTORY.  23 

habit  of  referring  actions  to  moral  standards  of  judg- 
ment, of  seeing  in  events  a  providential  agency,  of  re- 
garding the  universe  as  an  outcome  of  the  divine  will 
and  in  some  sense  a  constant  manifestation  of  divine 
reason.  Only,  in  the  matter  of  religion,  the  intensely 
practical  attitude  of  the  English,  their  sense,  perhaps,  of 
the  substance  of  religion  as  a  vital  element  absolutely 
essential  to  individual  and  national  life,  and  as  something 
already  safely  in  their  grasp,  in  their  possession,  seems  to 
me  to  render  them  impatient  of  inquiries  relative  to  the 
ultimate  warrant  of  faith.  The  immediate,  practical 
warrant  of  religious  faith  may  indeed  be  found  in  vital 
experience  and  in  historic  power.  Such  a  faith  is  not  to 
be  stigmatized  as  absolutely  blind  and  unreasonable. 
Yet  it  is  far  short  of  insight.  It  is  not  faith  resting 
on  and  illuminated  by  intelligence.  If  reasonable,  it  is 
not  wholly  rational.  It  implies  a  childhood  in  under- 
standing, against  which  the  Apostle  of  Christianity  to 
the  Gentiles  utters  an  express  warning.  A  consequence 
of  the  religious  attitude  of  the  English  mind  to  which 
I  am  now  referring  is,  or  has  often  been,  a  disposition 
to  cut  short  inquiry  and  to  cleave  knots  of  difficulty  with 
the  oracular  utterance,  "Thus  it  is  written," — forgetting 
that,  legitimate  as  this  course  may  be  under  given  cir- 
cumstances, it  cannot  always  be  pursued  without  induc- 
ing a  fatal  bondage  to  the  letter  "which  killeth,"  in 
distinction  from  the  spirit,  which,  illuminating  and  giv- 
ing sight,  also  "giveth  life."  This  is,  in  its  measure,  pre-  A 
cisely  such  a  substitution  of  mechanism  for  intelligence  |\ 
and  life  as,  in  other  fields  of  explanation,  English  science- 
philosophy  has  sought  to  effectuate.  Another  and  a 
related   consequence   of   the   same   mental  attitude  has 


24  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

been  a  disposition  to  restrict  the  sphere  of  human  rea- 
son by  emphasizing  the  existence  of  a  sphere  of  myste- 
rious and  essentially  unintelligible  truth,  somehow  made 
known  to  man  in  terms,  but  for  the  rest  only  to  be  un- 
questioningly  received  by  him  as  an  unconditional  pre- 
requisite for  the  restoration  and  preservation  of  his  soul's 
health.  This  is,  considered  in  se,  no  better  than  the  old 
attempts  to  attract  or  exorcise  spirits,  good  or  hud,  by 
pronouncing  a  series  of  unmeaning  syllables.  But,  then, 
here  again  a  distinction  is  to  be  made.  The  body  can- 
not flourish  unless  certain  physiological  processes  are 
executed  in  it,  which  we  may  not  understand,  but  in 
which,  would  we  live,  we  must  have  sufficient  faith  to 
supply — by  appropriate  eating  and  drinking,  for  example 
—  the  conditions  necessary  to  their  due  and  normal  prog- 
ress. In  like  manner,  spiritual  life  and  moral  health 
cannot  exist  without  obedience  from  a  sense  of  duty  to 
laws  and  principles,  the  whole  import  and  rationality  of 
which  we  may  not  yet  be  prepared  to  perceive  or  appre- 
ciate. But,  just  as,  in  the  former  case,  men  might  have 
had  from  the  beginning  a  reasonable  confidence  that 
every  fact  of  the  physiological  process  was  essentially, 
not  mysterious,  but  explicable,  so  in  matters  pertaining 
to  the  spiritual  life  of  man  in  religion  it  is  in  vain  that 
you  say  to  him,  "This  and  that  formula  you  must  accept 
as  an  accurate  statement  of  the  facts,  laws  and  principles 
(or  some  of  them)  concerned,  but  neither  you  nor  I,  nor 
those  who  come  after  us,  can  ever  expect  to  be  able  to 
render  such  an  account  of  them  as  shall  satisfy  the  rea- 
son and  intelligence  of  man."  Yet  this  is  just  what  the 
English  mind,  through  the  mouth  (for  instance)  of  such 
a  typical   and  genuine  representative  of  it  as  Francis 


INTRODUCTORY.  25 

Bacon,  as  well  as  through  others  (to  be  mentioned  in  the 
following  chapters),  has  presumed  to  declare  as  final 
truth.  It  is  on  spiritual  and  moral  inquiries,  according 
to  Bacon,  that  God  has  pronounced  a  curse,  upon  which 
therefore  man  should  only  venture  very  daintily,  if  in- 
deed at  all,  to  enter.  The  appropriate  field  of  knowledge 
for  man  is  physical  nature,  i.e.  the  realm  of  things  which 
"do  appear"  to  man  in  sensible  experience.  Bacon's 
attitude  well  illustrates  the  manner  in  which  English  / 
theology  and  English  science,  in  their  philosophical  neg-  ^ 
ativism,  extend  the  hand  to  each  other.  The  same  thing 
is  illustrated  in  a  more  developed  form  in  recent  phases 
of  religious  and  "scientific"  philosophy  in  England. 
Thus,  we  find,  on  the  one  hand.  Dean  Mansell,  as  the 
representative  of  the  religious  side,  after  the  precedent 
set  by  Bishop  Peter  Browne,  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  still  others  before  him,  and  with  philosophical  weap- 
ons borrowed,  through  Sir  William  Hamilton,  from  Kant, 
proving  the  utter  disparateness  of  the  divine  spirit  and 
the  spirit  of  man,  and  of  the  ways  of  God  and  man's 
ways,  so  that  the  former  are  for  human  reason  absolutely 
incognoscible.  And,  on  the  scientific  side,  we  have  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  as  the  lineal  descendant  of  the  more 
renowned  British  philosophizers  and  as  the  accredited 
mouth-piece  of  the  philosophizing  science  of  to-day, 
quoting  Mansell  with  delighted  approval  in  support  of 
the  (gratuitous)  conclusions  which  the  scientific  (in  dis- 
tinction from  the  philosophical)  method,  applied  to  spe- 
cifically philosophical  problems,  necessarily  and  naturally 
arrives  at,  namely,  that  these  problems  are  inherently  in- 
soluble for  man.  The  phenomenal,  sensibly  observable,  is, 
it  is  held,  (relatively)  knowable;  the  real  is  absolutely 
3 


26  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

unknowable.  The  true  philosopliy  is  to  have  no  philos- 
ophy, to  deny  the  possibility  of  philosophy,  or  else  to 
term  by  that  magnificent  name  the  broadest  generaliza- 
tions and  the  negations  of  physical  science. 

But  this  "asylum  ignorantiac'^  does  not  satisfy  all 
Englishmen.  There  be  those  that  would  comprehend  and 
explain.  Only,  that  intellectual  naivete  —  or,  shall  I  say, 
a  certain  insular  Bornirtheil,  or  contractedn.ess?  —  with 
which  we  have  already  met  in  our  analysis  of  certain 
sides  of  the  English  mind,  sgems  here  again  to  intervene 
between  volition  and  execution.  Here,  in  the  attempted 
explanation  of  God's  relation  to  the  world,  data  of  sense 
are  apt  to  be  uncritically  adopted  as  data  of  ultimate  fact, 
truth,  reality,  and  consequently  to  be  introduced  with 
absolutely  confusing  effect  into  the  lofty  problems  of  relig- 
ious philosophy.  Religious  controversialists  persist  obsti- 
nately in  not  accepting  practically  all  that  is  implied  in  a 
text  which  for  them  should  be  authoritative,  and  which 
declares  explicitly  that  the  explanation  of  the  apparent  is 
to  be  found  in  the  non-apparent  of  the  sensible,  in  the 
intelligible.  Hence  a  proneness  to  tarry  among,  and  expa- 
tiate in,  logical  distinctions  and  analogies  which  lie  on  the 
surface,  and  are  addressed  to  sense  and  the  analytic 
understanding,  rather  than  to  penetrate  with  the  power 
of  comprehensive,  syntlietic,  vital  reason  into  the  very 
heart  and  center  of  the  questions  involved. 

On  the  whole,  both  in  religion  and  in  science,  I  think 
we  may  say  with  obvious  trutli  that  the  characteristic  dis- 
position of  the  English  mind  is  to  lay  hold  upon  alleged 
revealed  or  natural  laws  of  fact,  in  their  immediate,  prac- 
tical relation  to  the  life  and  interests  of  men,  and  as  nar- 
rowly observable  in  detail  with  the  microscopic  vision  of 


INTRODUCTORY.  27 

sense.  With  this  goes  a  tendency  to  neglect  that  more 
comprehensive  and  penetrative  mental  labor  which  traces 
the  rational  connection  of  all  law  with  its  birthplace  in 
the  mind  and  will  of  an  Absolute  Spirit.  Eeligion  and 
Science  (by  which  latter  I  understand  all  results  of  the 
application  of  the  mathematico-mechanical  method,  or 
all  systematic  knowledge  of  phenomena)  occupy,  on  the 
whole,  exclusively  the  theoretical  interests  of  the  English 
mind.  Philosophy  (stigmatized  often  •  as  metaphysical 
jargon)  is  their  common  waste-basket.  (I  shall  have  more 
fitting  occasion  hereafter  to  examine  and  characterize 
more  in  detail  the  scientific  attitude  of  the  English 
mind.) 

This,  however,  is  only  one,  and  that  the  least  inspiring, 
half  of  our  picture.  Along  with  and  in  spite  of  this  — 
to  a  philosophic  mind  —  exasperating  self-limitation  and 
self-obfuscation  of  the  English  upon  those  lines  of  theo- 
retical inquiry  which  would  lead  directly  to  philosophy, 
we  find  that  this  nation  possesses,  in  the  language  of  a 
German  historian,  "a  preeminent  gift  for  poetry,  perhaps 
the  most  perfect  that  has  ever  fallen  to  the  lot  of  any 
people."  And  this  poetic  gift  is  not  a  mere  talent,  it  is 
real  genius.  It  is  not  satisfied  with  pleasing  outward 
forms  and  tones  alone.  It  is  all-penetrating.  It  ranges 
over  the  whole  scale  of  the  heart's  emotions.  It  does  not 
shrink  back  from  any  flights  of  intellect.  For  it  nature  is 
peaceful  and  gay,  or  wild  and  darkly  significant.  With  it 
human  life  is  an  idyl,  or  more  frequently  a  drama,  in 
which  invisible  powers  are  the  actors.  Human  life  is  a 
theater  of  actions  heroic,  comical  or  tragic,  or  the  portal 

to  an 

"Undiscovered  country,  from  whose  bourn 
No  traveller  returns," 


28  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

and  from  which,  it  is  fully  recognized,  no  just  soul  would 
fain  return.  "Among  all  the  nations  which  participate  in 
our  modern  civilization,"  says,  further,  the  author  above 
quoted,  "  the  classical  nation  in  poetry  is  the  English." 

Now  I  have  spoken  above  of  the  poetic  faculty  of  the 
English,  their  power  of  creative  imagination,  as  the 
pledge  of  their  speculative  ability.  And  indeed  the  close 
relation  between  poetic  and  philosophic  endowment  has 
long  been  recognized  —  since  Plato's  time,  for  example, 
before  whom  it  had  been  amply  illustrated  in  notable 
instances.  The  difference  between  the  poet  and  the  phi- 
losopher is  one  of  system  and  of  systematic  intelligence, 
rather  than  of  inspiration.  The  leading  interpreters,  even 
of  scientific  method,  among  the  English  of  to-day  recog- 
nize the  essential  necessity  of  a  certain  poetic  gift,  a 
"scientific  imagination,"  as  it  is  called,  for  the  purposes  of 
scientific  discovery.  In  the  British  poets,  accordingly,  we 
find  the  best  British  philosophy.  What  English  moralist, 
for  example,  is  equal  to  William Shakespeare,who  is  not 
only  the  real  historian  of  the  modern  mind  (an  office 
which  of  itself  implies  profound  philosophic  insight),  but 
also,  in  the  language  of  the  title-page  of  a  recent  German 
publication,  ^Uler  Philoso})h  der  siitlichen  Welfordnnnf/,"' 
"the  philosopher  of  the  moral  order  of  the  world"? 
What  professed  English  philosopher  has  possessed  so 
profound  an  appreciation  of  the  idealistic  philosophy 
of  nature  as  Wordsworth?  What  religious  philosoplier 
in  England  has  approached  the  subtlest  problems  of  re- 
ligious thought  with  more  sympathetic  and  discerning 
insight  than  Coleridge?  What  living  English  thinker 
has  fathomed  in  well-reasoned,  systematic  prose  the  dark 
questions  of  theodicy,  and  illumined  them   more   bril- 


INTRODUCTORY.  29 

liantly  with  the  light  of  rational  faith  and  insight,  than 
Tennyson?  Not  to  mention  many  others,  whose  poetic 
flights  have  been  ballasted  with  solid  weights  of  thought. 
Can  it  be,  now,  that  a  real  philosophic  talent,  thus 
attested,  may  not  be  expected  sooner  or  later  to  manifest 
itself  in  the  forms  of  thoroughly  reasoned  speculation  ? 
I  cannot  so  believe.  Under  the  influence  of  German 
precedents,  I  think  I  see  developing  to-day  signs,  and 
very  promising  ones,  of  a  movement  which  may  in  its 
final  developments  realize  our  hopeful  expectations  for  a 
more  brilliant  future  of  English  philosophy.  Yet  it  were 
perhaps  wiser  to  leave  to  history  the  passing  of  judgments 
for  which  she  alone  is  competent.  For  a  like  reason  it 
were  doubtless  better  to  omit  speculations  concerning 
possible  modifications  of  English  thought  whiclr  may 
result  from  the  wide  enlargement  of  tlie  empire  of  the 
English  tongue,  although  from  this  point  of  view  it  were 
not  difficult  to  formulate  grounds  of  hope. 


CHAPTER  II. 

MEDIAEVAL  ANTICIPATIONS  OF  THE  MODERN  ENGLISH 

MIND. 

"Es  ist  ein  gross  Ergotzen 
Sich  in  den  Geist  der  Zeiten  zu  versetzen, 
Zu  schauen,  wie  vor  uns  ein  weiser  Mann  gedacht, 
Und  wie  wir's  dann  zuletzt  so  herrlich  weit  gebracht." 

Ga'thes  Faust:  Scene  I. 

"A  great  delight  is  granted 
When,  in  the  spirit  of  the  ages  planted, 
We  mark  how,  ere  our  time,  a  sage  has  thought. 
And  then,  how  far  his  work,  and  grandly,  we  have  brought." 

Taylor's  translation. 

In  these  words  of  the  pedant,  Faust's  companion, 
taken  apart  from  the  irony  and  stern  criticism  with 
which  Faust,  in  the  next  following  lines,  rebukes  the 
spirit  in  which  they  are  uttered,  we  may  find  an  apt 
text  for  some  of  the  contemplations  which  now  lie  im- 
mediately before  us.  The  thoughts  which,  in  this  view, 
I  would  especially  connect  with  them,  concern  (1)  the 
fascination  there  is  for  us  moderns,  when,  with  fresh, 
humane  sympathies,  we  are  enabled  to  reproduce  in 
imagination  the  lives  and  thoughts  of  our  ancestors, 
appreciating  the  things  which  gave  them  joy  and  sorrow, 
with  intelligent  charity  for  their  errors,  and  generous 
recognition  of  their  successes,  and,  above  all,  with  such 
a  quickened  sense  of  the  oneness  of  their  humanity  with 
our  own,  that  we  see  in  them  ourselves  in  their  circum- 
stances; and  (3)  the  continuity  of  intellectual  types,  the 

so 


SEVEEAL    ENGLISH    SCHOOLMEN".  31 

fixity  of  national  intellectual  species,  as  established  in 
the  present  case  by  the  comparison  of  a  few  representa- 
tive Englishmen  of  the  time  of  the  schoolmen  with 
what  we  already  know  of  the  prevailing  tendencies  of 
the  English  mind. 

We  are  apt  to  look  down  and  back  with  an  air  of 
lordly  contempt  upon  what  is  termed  the  scholastic 
period  in  the  history  of  European  thought,  with  about 
as  much,  or  rather  as  little,  intelligence,  as  if  we  were 
in  the  period  of  manhood  to  despise  the  memories  of 
youth.  A  race,  a  civilization,  must  have  its  time  of 
schooling  as  well  as  an  individual.  And  during  this 
time  it  will  naturally  exhibit  the  same  ineptitudes,  Aveak- 
nesses,  follies,  but  also  the  same  bright  prophecies  of 
hope,  which  are  discernible  in  "  the  growing  boy."  Nay, 
more,  we  shall  perhaps  find,  on  closer  inspection,  that, 
like  the  boy,  it,  too,  "  still  is  nature's  priest, 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 
Is  on  its  way  attended"; 

the  vision,  namely,  of  realities,  which  we,  for  the  very 
atomic  dustiness  of  our  perfected  worldly  wisdom,  are 
unable  to  see,  or,  from  the  loss  of  our  boyish  smiplicity, 
are  ashamed  to  confess. 

The  scholastic  period  was  the  early  school  time  of  our 
Occidental  christian  civilization.  Christendom,  especially 
in  central  and  northern  Europe,  had  then  but  recently 
emerged  from  heathendom ;  and  even  on  the  ground  of 
the  ancient  pagan  civilizations  it  had,  on  the  one  hand, 
sprung  up  at  an  epoch  Avhen  these  civilizations  had  al- 
ready decayed,  or  were  decaying,  and  leaving  no  natural 
heir  behind  them,  and  when,  on  the  other,  the  necessities 


82  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

of  its  own  existence  forced  it,  in  the  greatest  measure,  to 
break  off  the  line  of  tradition,  which  might  otherwise 
have  preserved  for  it  not  only  the  elements,  but  the 
riches,  of  ancient  culture.  The  Occidental  mind  was 
then  like  an  overgrown,  undisciplined  boy,  such  as  all 
savages  are  said,  as  a  rule,  to  be.  The  first  condition  of 
its  future  mastership  was,  then,  that  it  should  itself  be 
mastered.  It  could  learn  to  rule  both  itself  and  others 
only  by  first  undergoing  a  suitable  and  prolonged  train- 
ing in  regulated  obedience.  Such  training  the  church, 
as  a  central  authority,  through  the  schools,  as  its  instru- 
ments, furnished,  and  it  were  no  less  irrational  than 
ungrateful  to  ignore,  or  pretend  to  ignore,  tlie  service  to 
civilization  thus  rendered.  Yet  it  was  with  scholasticism 
as  with  all  schools.  Those  who  had  (through  their  an- 
cestors) received  its  benefits,  first  celebrated  their  release 
from  its  restraints  by  hurling  at  it  their  manly  anathe- 
mas, very  much  as  the  boy,  Avhen  the  period  of  his  youth- 
ful schooling  is  over,  is  apt  to  turn  his  back  on  the  scene 
of  his  scholastic  discipline,  and  on  his  teachers,  with  the 
exclamation  "Good  bye,  old  school!  you  can't  rule  me 
any  longer."  So,  in  the  time  of  the  Renaissance,  when, 
through  the  restoration  of  ancient  letters  and  learning, 
the  modern  mind  leaped  forward  out  of  the  period  of 
youthful  guardianship  into  the  confident  glow  of  dawn- 
ing manhood,  scliolasticism  was  dismissed  witii  contempt- 
uous and  otherwise  forcible  maledictions,  in  utter  forget- 
fulness  of  the  circumstance  that,  but  for  its  previous 
scholastic  discipline,  the  Renaissance  mind  would  have 
been  utterly  unfitted  to  exj)atiate  with  such  intelligent 
rapture  in  the  new  fields  of  thought  and  learning  finally 
opened  up  to  it.   For  this  injustice  some  reparation. has  of 


SEVERAL    ENGLISH    SCHOOLMEN".  33 

late  years,  under  the  lead,  especially,  of  Continental  schol- 
ars, been  made.  Of  intellectual  maturity,  of  ripe  wisdom, 
I  suppose  there  is  no  more  certain  mark  than  a  tolerant 
catholicity.  An  earlier  and  inferior  stage  of  intellectual 
development  has  its  inherent  necessity,  its  relative  or 
historic  justification.  It  is  not  the  part  of  wisdom  to 
begin  by  attempting  to  kick  it  all  over  and  to  annihilate 
it,  with  a  view  of  beginning  absolutely  de  novo.  No  such 
break  of  continuity  is  possible.  The  past  is  to  be  cor- 
rected, if  need  be,  and  supplemented:  it  cannot  be  over- 
thrown. On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  to  be  worsliipped. 
Any  attempt  to  perpetuate  its  dominion  by  holding  the 
mind  of  man  back  to  methods  and  points  of  view  which 
have  no  longer  any  (or,  at  most,  only  a  subordinate) 
raison  d'etre,  is  no  less  unreasonable  and  imbecile  than 
is  ignorant  contempt. 

Now  if  with  unprejudiced  minds  and  at  least  so  much 
of  sympathetic  spirit  as  the  Roman  poet  possessed,  who 
could  consider  nothing  pertaining  to  man  as  foreign  to 
himself, — if,  I  say,  with  such  mind  and  spirit,  we  look  at 
scholasticism  in  itself,  in  its  historic  setting,  and  in  the 
vital  interests  which  were  felt  to  be  concerned  in  it,  we 
shall  surely  discover  about  it  somewhat  of  that  imperish- 
able charm  which  is  never  wanting  where  human  hearts 
throb  and  human  brains  are  active.  As  to  its  historic 
setting,  scholasticism  is  a  part  or  appurtenance  of  medijie- 
valism.  And  what  a  picture  does  not  this  word  suggest 
to  the  instructed  and  appreciative  mind !  Castles  with 
dungeons  and  towers  and  lordly  halls,  knightly  lords  and 
ladies,  esquires,  pages  and  faithful  vassals,  chivalrous 
votaries  of  love,  more  valiant  than  intelligent  defenders  of 
religion,  grave  and  yet  spirited  bearers  of  secular  responsi- 


34  IJRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

bilitics;  burghers  and  tradesmen  with  guilds  and  banners, 
singing-schools,  and  fisting-schools,  and  peasants,  hard- 
pressed,  no  doubt,  and  over- worked  and  brutalized,  yet 
still,  in  their  degradation,  retaining  sparks  of  imagina- 
tion kept  aglow  by  tales  of  fairies  and  hobgoblins,  quick- 
ened symbols  of  their  hopes  and  joys,  or  of  their 
dreads.  In  general,  the  old  pagan  imagination,  or  its 
lineal  descendant,  interfused  with  cliristian-  story  and 
imperfectly  regulated  by  christian  dogma.  No  wonder 
that  the  European  literature  of  the  last  century,  in  those 
developments  to  which  the  name  "  Romantic"  is  applied, 
has  found  a  fruitful  and  lively  source  of  inspiration,  in 
distinction  from  classic  themes  and  motives,  in  mediaival 
legend  and  story.  Sense  and  imagination,  tlie  gayest 
and  the  darkest  colors  side  by  side,  a  sort  of  right  of 
might,  tempered  more  by  sentiment  than  by  reason,  these 
make  up  the  most  obvious  side  of  mediseval  life,  in  which 
to-day  the  poetic  fancy  finds  delight.  In  such  a  scene 
as  this  the  scholastic  doctor  appears,  in  the  gray  and 
sombre,  or,  at  best,  neutral  tints  of  the  friar's  garb.  The 
earth  is  still  the  centre  of  the  universe,  and  its  surface 
is  imagined  to  extend  but  little  beyond  Christendom. 
And  of  Christendom  the  scholastic  doctor,  surnamed 
"angelic,"  "irrefragable,"  "invincible,"  etc.,  as  the  case 
may  be,  is  reputed  to  carry  the  brain.  The  professed  and 
accredited  exponent  and  expounder  of  the  christian 
graces,  he  is  also  robed  in  the  imperial  purple  of 
learning  and  of  thought.  The  young  men  and  strong 
run  by  thousands  together  to  listen  to  his  eloquent  words, 
to  wonder  at  his  subtle  distinctions,  and  to  admire  and 
appropriate  his  wisdom,  or  that  of  his  master,  the  pagan 
christian,  Aristotle    {precursor  Christi  in  naturalibus). 


SEVERAL   ENGLISH    SCHOOLMEN.  35 

As  at  once  the  messenger  of  God,  and  the  "  tamer  "  and 
interpreter  of  human  reason,  his  person  and  office  are 
held  sacred  by  all ;  except,  indeed,  in  those  rare  cases  in 
which  he  is  deemed  to  have  transgressed  limits  imposed 
by  the  church  or  his  order.  He  is  the  representative  of 
intellectual  power,  and  as  such  receives  the  respect  and 
reverence  which  are  always  granted  to  such  power.  By 
virtue  of  its  very  real  autiiority,  William  of  Occam 
could  say  to  Ludwig  of  Bavaria,  "  Defend  me  with  thy 
sword,  and  I  will  defend  thee  with  the  [no  less  mighty] 
pen."  Scholasticism  was  in  some  sense  the  balance-wheel 
of  meditBval  life.  It  was  the  pilot,  in  its  time,  of  modern 
civilization,  storm-tossed  in  the  ship  Church,  and  when 
it  had  guided  it  to  the  port  of  modern  life  and  thought, 
its  office  having  ceased,  it  naturally  disappeared  from 
view. 

Now  scholasticism,  like  the  church,  its  mistress,  knew 
no  barriers  of  language,  of  political  or  national  separa- 
tion, within  its  geographical  boundaries.  Within  the  em- 
brace of  the  church  all  of  European  Christendom  was  one 
fold,  with  one  language,  the  Latin,  consecrated  to  religion 
and  discussion,  and  with  substantial  homogeneity  of  intel- 
lectual interests.  The  great  schools  of  Italy,  Spain,  France, 
England,  were  frequented  freely,  and  in  immense  numbers, 
by  students  from  all  countries.  The  eminent  scholastic 
doctors  were  equally  Italian,  French,  English,  or  of  any 
other  christian  nationality.  England,  or  the  British  Isles, 
sent  out  its  full  quota  of  generals  and  soldiers  into  the 
army  of  scholasticism.  Of  the  former  I  need  only  men- 
tion John  Scotus  Erigena,  of  Scotch-Irish  extraction, 
whose  place  is  in  the  very  front  rank  of  scholastic  philos- 
ophers for  profundity  and  acuteness,  as  he  is  the  first  im- 


36  BRITISU   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

poi'tant  one  in  point  of  time  (about  800-877) ;  Jolin  of 
Salisbury;  Alexander  of  Hales,  "Doclor  IrrefragnbiUs,'" 
whose  Summa  Tlieologiae  marks  a  leading  turning-point 
in  the  history  of  scholasticism;  Duns  Scotus,  the  "subtle 
doctor,"  founder  of  one  of  the  two  most  influential  schools 
of  later  scholastic  thought;  Roger  Bacon,  according  to 
many,  the  greater  predecessor  of  his  more  illustrious  and 
fortunate  namesake,  Francis  Bacon ;  and  William  of 
Occam,  "Doctor  InvincibiUs,^''  "Inccptor  veiieraOilis,"  the 
"inceptor,"  namely,  in  the  early  part  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  of  a  doctrine  which  was  the  death-warrant  of  the 
scholastic  philosophy.  And  what  I  would  urge  is,  that  if 
you  consider  among  these  schoolmen  those  who  were 
strictly  English,  you  find  in  them  already  distinct  evi- 
dences of  that  type  or  direction  of  thought  which  in  the 
last  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  has  become  so  pro- 
nounced a  characteristic  of  the  English  mind. 

The  leading  traits  of  this  type  may  be  enumerated 
(summing  up  our  last  chapter)  as  follows  :  (1)  Subordina- 
tion of  theory  to  practice ;  (2)  Profession  of  agnosticism  or 
scepticism  respecting  ultimate  philosophical  questions ; 
and,  (3)  Zealous  cultivation  of  physical  science  as  a  thing 
of  palpable,  demonstrative,  and  practical  certainty  and 
utility. 

Consider  for  a  moment  John  of  Salisbury.  Living  in 
the  twelfth  century,  a  man  of  scholarly  tastes,  he  devotes 
himself,  by  preference,  to  the  study  of  so  much  as  was 
then  known  of  the  classic  literature  of  antiquity,  Cicero 
being  his  favorite  author.  The  influence  of  these  studies 
on  his  own  Latin  style  was  such  that  he  has  received 
frequent  and  high  praise  for  his  elegant  diction.  An 
earnest  churchman  and  sincere  believer,  he  is  yet,  as  a 


SEVERAL  ENGLISH   SCHOOLMEN".  37 

practical  Englishman,  more  concerned  with  the  external 
political  relations  of  the  church  than  with  those  subtle 
and,  in  his  view,  comparatively  nugatory  discussions  re- 
garding questions  of  doctrine,  of  faith  and  philosophy, 
which  were  going  on  in  the  church's  schools.  What 
thoughtful  student  will  not  recognize,  with  some  inclina- 
tion to  indulge  in  an  innocent  smile,  the  characteristic 
philosophical  naivete  and  practical,  moral,  earnestness  of 
the  British  mind  in  the  following  historical  statement 
from  Ueberweg  ?  "  In  opposition  to  the  fruitless  conten- 
tions of  the  schools,  John  lays  great  stress  on  the  '  utile ', 
and  on  whatever  furthers  moral  progress."  A  practical 
farmer  might  occupy  this  position,  and  it  would  excite  no 
remark.  We  sliould  recognize  appreciatively  the  moral 
worth  of  the  man,  and  quietly  ignore  any  depreciatory 
utterances  of  his  concerning  the  value  or  importance  of 
matters  which  he  was  in  no  condition  to  understand  or 
prosecute.  But,  on  the  part  of  a  cultivated  man  of  letters, 
of  pliilosophy,  and  of  religion !  However,  we  must  not 
push  this  line  of  critical  observation  too  far.  Likely 
enough  the  scholastic  contentions  of  John  of  Salisbury's 
day  did  and  could  not  but  seem  not  only  "  fruitless"  but 
tasteless  enough  to  a  person  possessing  a  marked  degree 
of  refined  taste,  and  not  endowed  with  the  power  of  spec- 
ulative insight  and  comprehension.  The  important  thing 
for  us  to  notice  about  John  is  that,  like  the  members 
of  the  Academic  school,  of  whom  Cicero  could  inform 
him,  he,  too,  held  that  all  inquiries  directed  to  the  spec- 
ulative attainment  of  absolute  truth  must  be,  from  the 
nature  of  things,  unavailing.  The  true  utile  for  man  lay  in 
faith.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  beyond  faith  we  could  not 
get  through  the  use  of  our  intellectual  faculties ;  nay,  we 


38  BKITISII   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

could  not  thus  even  attain  to  faith,  but  only,  at  best,  to 
probable  opinion. 

A  more  striking  and  personally  interesting  figure  is  that 
of  Roger  Bacon.  Born  in  the  year  1214,  near  Ilchester, 
in  Somersetshire,  his  life  extends  through  nearly  the 
whole  of  the  classic  century  of  scholasticism.  And  yet, 
though  a  student  and  teacher  in  the  schools,  wearing  the 
dress  of  a  Franciscan  monk,  and  acknowledging,  with  the 
rest  of  his  contemporaries,  the  supremacy  of  the  interests 
of  faith  (as  including  those  of  religion  and  morality,  and 
hence  of  perfected  and  successful  manhood  itself),  his 
image  stands  out  in  picturesque  and  impressive  contrast 
with  the  intellectual  life  of  his  time.  As  a  student  at 
Oxford  and  Paris  his  commanding  mental  qualities  ob- 
tained early  recognition.  He  was  the  critic  of  his  teach- 
ers, not  a  merely  passive  recipient  of  their  knowledge. 
The  genuine  and  the  palpable  could  alone  content  him. 
First,  what  do  the  acknowledged  authorities  for  our  faith 
and  knowledge,  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  Scriptures,  tlie 
works  of  Aristotle,  the  commentaries  of  the  Arabians 
(then  held  in  the  highest  esteem)  really  teach  ?  That  this 
could  not  be  known  through  the  Latin  translations  then 
current.  Bacon  was  convinced.  These  translations  were 
the  imperfect  work  of  ignorant  bunglers.  Instead,  there- 
fore, of  wasting  long,  plodding  years  on  the  technicalities 
of  grammar  and  logic  —  which,  rightly  considered,  are,  in 
Roger  Bacon's  view  (with  which  John  Locke  agrees),  but 
different  names  for  an  innate  and  unstudied  art  which 
every  healthy  mind  naturally  possesses  —  he  would  have 
scholars  devote  themselves  first  to  a  careful  and  thorough 
study  of  Hebrew,  Greek  and  Arabic.  They  must  be  able 
to  read    these   languages   with  ease   and  correctness  for 


SEVERAL    ENGLISH    SCHOOLMEN".  39 

themselves.  Only  on  this  condition  could  they  expect 
rightly  to  understand  the  Scriptures,  or  Aristotle  or  his 
Arabian  commentators.  Accordingly  Bacon,  while  teach- 
ing at  Oxford,  devoted  himself  earnestly  to  the  study  of 
these  languages,  and  spared  no  expense  to  procure  for 
himself  the  best  manuscripts.  No  wonder  that,  in  the 
simple  imagination  of  the  people,  or  in  the  ignorant 
imagination  of  illiterate  ecclesiastics,  the  story  (repeated 
by  Bayle)  could  find  currency  that  he  had  discovered  a 
receipt  for  teaching  any  one  "  in  a  very  few  days  Hebrew, 
Latin,  Greek,  and  Arabic." 

But  all  valuable  and  accessible  knowledge  is  not,  in 
Bacon's  view,  to  be  acquired  through  the  interpretation 
of  texts.  There  is  another  book,  the  book  of  nature,  to 
be  read,  and  by  another  method,  made  up  of  a  combina- 
tion of  mathematics  with  experiment.  In  his  apprecia- 
tion of  mathematics,  as  an  instrument  of  scientific 
method,  Bacon  was  far  in  advance  of  his  age,  and  a 
herald  of  modern  physical  science,  which,  in  the  estima- 
tion of  a  living  German  historian  of  modern  thought, 
first  arrived  at  complete  theoretical  independence,  and 
was  ready  to  be  separated  from  philosophy,  when  Newton 
formally  stated,  and  successfully  inaugurated  the  applica- 
tion of,  its  method,  as  consisting  in  the  regulated  "  com- 
bination of  induction  with  mathematical  deduction " 
(Windelband,  Geschichte  der  neueren  Fhilosophie,  I,  290). 
Roger  Bacon,  naturally,  could  not  be  expected  to  draw 
the  line  of  distinction  between  philosophy  and  science, 
and  their  respective  methods,  for  wliich  the  times  were 
then  not  ripe.  But  in  his  naive  faith  in  the  applicability 
of  mathematics  to  all  branches  of  knowledge  he  appears 
as  the  prototype  of  many  English  (and  also  Continental) 


40  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

enthusiasts  of  a  later  day,  as  Hobbes  and  Locke,  Descartes 
and  Spinoza,  and  in  an  important  and  essential  sense  even 
the  author  of  the  "Critique  of  Pure  Reason"  himself. 
Mathematics  is  for  him,  in  his  own  language,  the  very 
"alphabet  of  philosophy."  It  is  the  "first  among  all 
sciences,"  not  only  in  rank,  but  also  as  to  the  time  of  its 
"discovery."  It  is  in  some  sense  innate  in  man,  and 
was  known  to  the  holy  men  at  the  beginning  of  the 
world.  It  is  the  "door  and  key"  to  all  sciences,  includ- 
ing that  which  we  now  exclude  from  the  rank  of  a  science, 
namely,  magic.  It  alone  furnishes  absolutely  valid  dem- 
onstrations, and  through  its  aid  alone,  therefore,  can 
man  arrive  at  the  knowledge  of  truth  without  any  ad- 
mixture of  error.  We  need  it  for  the  interpretation  of 
Scripture  even,  and  for  the  establishment  of  moral  science. 
It  is,  in  Bacon's  words,  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of 
"  the  church  of  God  for  the  common  benefit  of  believers, 
the  conversion  of  unbelievers,  and  the  repression  of  those 
who  cannot  be  converted."  (See  L.  Schneider,  R.  Bacon, 
Augsburg,  1873.) 

But  the  chief  theoretical  interest  of  Bacon  lies  in  the 
knowledge  of  nature,  in  the  discovery  of  her  mechanical 
secrets,  the  consequent  dispelling  of  the  rude  ignorance 
of  which  he  complains  as  universal,  and  the  improve- 
ment of  man's  present  estate.  Accordingly  we  read  of 
his  spending  very  large  sums,  perhaps  the  most  of  his 
large  estate,  in  the  purchase  of  instruments,  and  in  mak- 
ing experiments.  Of  so  great  importance  was  this  way 
and  kind  of  knowledge  to  him,  and  so  far  did  he  carry 
his  researches  in  this  direction,  that  he  was  believed  to 
possess  magical  secrets  which  nought  but  collusion  with 
the  devil  could  account  for.     Accordingly  he  was  for- 


SEVERAL  ENGLISH   SCHOOLMEN".  41 

bidden  by  his  monastic  superiors  to  "communicate  to 
any  one  anything  concerning  his  labors  and  the  results 
of  his  investigations,"  and  compelled  to  live  an  unwilling 
exile  ten  years  in  France.  At  last  invited  by  a  pope,  who 
was  favorable  to  him,  to  communicate  to  him  what  he 
knew,  at  the  age  of  fifty-two  he  set  about  the  composition 
of  immense  works,  which  he  completed  in  a  year  and 
a  half,  and  sent,  along  with  certain  mathematical  instru- 
ments, by  a  trusty  messenger,  a  pupil  of  his  own,  to 
Rome.  "After  the  death  of  his  papal  patron  "  he  became 
again  the  victim  of  "  the  envy  and  superstitious  ignorance 
of  his  brother  monks,"  at  whose  instigation  he  was  ac- 
cused of  practicing  the  black  art  and  teaching  dangerous 
doctrines,  and  was  compelled  to  pass  ten  years  in  a 
dungeon  at  Paris.  A  few  years  before  his  death  the  old 
man  was  at  last  released  and  permitted  to  return  to  his 
native  England,  where  he  died  and  where,  at  Oxford, 
he  lies  buried. 

There  is  something  deeply  pathetic  and  even  tragic  in 
the  fortunes  of  Roger  Bacon.  His  fate  was  that  which 
has  so  often,  and  from  the  very  necessities  of  the  case, 
befallen  real  greatness  in  the  world.  It  stands  alone,  on 
heights  unknown  to  its  contemporaries,  who  look  on  it 
with  ignorant  contempt  and  reward  it  with  sacrilegious 
buffetings.  That  is  perhaps  more  true  of  him,  which  is 
alleged  of  Francis  Bacon,  that  he  "  took  a  view  of  every- 
thing as  from  a  high  rock."  His  experience  reminds  one 
of  Heine's  saying:  "Wherever  a  great  mind  utters  its 
thoughts,  there  is  Golgotha."  Says  Prof.  Noack :  "  In 
view  of  his  knowledge  of  languages  and  of  the  natural 
sciences  Roger  Bacon  stood  as  a  giant  among  his  contem- 
poraries."    Many  are  the  inventions  and  discoveries  (as 


42  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

of  gunpowder  —  though  incorrectly)  which  have  been 
ascribed  to  him,  and  still  more  startling  are  those  which 
he  predicted.  It  is  reported  that  it  was  a  passage  stolen 
from  Roger  Bacon  by  some  author  known  to  Columbus 
that,  arresting  the  attention  of  the  latter,  led  him  to  the 
formation  of  his  world-discovering  plans.  By  his  appre- 
ciation of  mathematics,  and  the  solidity  of  his  own  scien- 
tific work  {e.g.  in  optics),  Roger  Bacon  certainly  is  supe- 
rior to  his  successor,  Francis  Bacon,  Lord  Verulam.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  points  of  intellectual  resemblance 
between  the  two  Bacons  are  numerous  and  very  striking. 
If  Francis  Bacon  is  by  general  admission  an  accurate 
representative  of  the  English  mind  on  one  of  its  most 
striking  sides,  in  Roger  Bacon  we  must  recognize  a 
prophecy  or  evidence  of  the  same  English  type  shining 
out  of  the  profounder  darkness  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

To  his  contemporaries  Roger  Bacon  was  a  wonder. 
Hence  the  appellation  which  they  gave  him,  ^^  Doctor 
Mirabilis." 

I  cannot,  for  obvious  reasons,  enter  here  upon  a  de- 
tailed examination  of  the  speculations  of  the  eminently 
"subtle  doctor,"  Duns  Scotus,  born  either  in  Northum- 
berland, or  in  the  north  of  Ireland.  It  is  sufficient  for 
our  present  purpose  —  which  is  to  discover  in  the  earlier 
times  the  moral  and  mental  features  of  the  Englishman 
as  now  known  to  us —  if  I  show,  in  the  most  general  way, 
what  was  peculiar  in  his  position  as  a  theologian  and 
philosopher. 

In  Thomas  Aquinas  and  Albert  the  Great  the  scholas- 
tic philosophy  had  reached  its  culmination.  Revelation 
and  Aristotelianism  had  been  combined  in  a  way  to 
render  theology  as  nearly  as  possible  rational,  while  yet 


SEVERAL  ENGLISH   SCHOOLMEN".  43 

maintaining  certain  limits  of  reason  and  the  necessity  of 
faith,  the  latter  resting  on  the  absolute  authority  of  the 
data  of  revelation  duly  delivered  and  interpreted  by  the 
organs  of  the  church.  With  reference  to  this  philosophy 
the  attitude  of  Duns  Scotus  was  sharply  critical.  He 
would  contract  still  further  the  limits  of  reason's  power, 
and  attribute  still  more  to  revelation.  But  in  particular 
he  insisted  upon  reversing  the  relation  which  St.  Thomas 
had  maintained  as  existing  between  will  and  intellect, 
both  in  the  divine  and  the  human  spirit.  According  to 
Thomas,  the  acts  which  proceeded  from  the  divine  will 
found  their  sufficient  and  explaining  reason  in  the  ideas 
of  the  divine  mind.  If  God,  through  his  creative  will, 
was  the  author  of  good,  it  was  not  arbitrarily,  but  because 
through  his  intelligence  he  saw  that  it  was  good.  In- 
tellect determined  will.  Duns  Scotus  asserted  the  con- 
trary; not  absolutely,  but  relatively  or  generally,  i.e.  with 
reference  to  the  majority  of  the  subjects  of  human  judg- 
ment. All  of  the  profounder  forms  of  philosophical  ideal- 
ism, for  example,  regard  the  world  as  an  expression  of 
eternal  and  necessary  reason,  and  consequently  of  eternal 
and  necessary  goodness;  imperfect,  indeed,  and  incom- 
plete, yet  not  arbitrary,  for  then  it  Avould  be  no  better 
than  a  product  of  senseless,  but  irresistible  fate,  or  of  blind 
force,  and  as  such  would  be  utterly  inexplicable.  For 
philosophy  the  reality  of  the  world  is  proportioned  to  its 
ideality,  or  rationality ;  only  on  this  condition  is  it  intel- 
ligible ;  in  other  words,  only  on  this  condition  is  a  phi- 
losophy of  finite  existence  possible.  But  for  Duns  Scotus 
the  world  is  capable  of  no  such  rational  explanation.  It 
cannot  be  regarded  as  the  world  which  either  absolute 
reason  or  absolute  goodness  required.     It  is  not  to  be 


44  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

regarded  as  intrinsically  a  manifestation  of  divine  intelli- 
gence, as  such,  or  of  divine  goodness.  It  is  only  to  be 
viewed  as  a  means,  by  the  right  use  of  which  on  man's 
part  the  only  end  of  its  existence,  namely,  the  salvation 
of  mankind,  is  attained.  This,  then,  is  the  only  reason 
or  explanation  of  the  world's  existence.  It  is  simply  a 
means  incidental  to  the  attainment,  on  man's  part,  of 
eternal  life.  Nor  can  it  be  said  to  be  intrinsically  a 
necessary  means,  i.e.  the  only  one  which  God  could  have 
chosen.  It  was,  indeed,  "  fittingly,"  but  still  arbitrarily, 
chosen  by  God,  and  in  so  fur  is  accidental.  God's  sov- 
ereign will  created  it,  but  no  necessity  of  eternal  reason 
and  goodness  determined  him  to  create  it.  But,  once 
created,  and  the  laws  of  its  natural  and  moral  order  being 
once  fixed,  the  immortality  of  the  divine  nature  makes  it 
impossible  that  these  should  be  changed.  Thus,  then, 
it  is  because  God  has  with  arbitrary  sovereignty  decreed, 
as  a  condition  of  salvation,  that  we  love  our  neighbors, 
that  such  love  is  evermore  right  or  due.  The  good  is 
good  because  God  wills  it;  we  may  not  say  that  he  willed 
it  because  it  was  good.  Only  one  thing  Duns  Scotus 
admits  that  God  could  not  have  refrained  from  command- 
ing, and  that  is  the  love  of  himself;  all  else  is  arbitrary. 

A  similar  doctrine  is  taught  by  Scotus  concerning  the 
freedom  of  the  human  will,  although  with  modifications 
or  concessions  whicli  relieve  it  of  somewhat  of  its  appa- 
rent irrationality. 

Duns  Scotus  died  while  still  young,  in  1308,  at  Cologne, 
whither  he  had  been  sent  to  take  part  in  a  disputation. 
According  to  the  common  account,  he  was  only  thirty- 
four  years  old  when  he  died.  His  was  no  idle  life.  Stu- 
dents of  his  works  say  they  miss  in  them  the  philosophic 


SEVERAL  EKGLISH   SCHOOLMEN^.  45 

poise  and  calm  which  characterize  the  writings  of  St. 
Thomas,  the  leader  of  his  opponents.  They  even  profess 
to  discover  in  them  some  signs  of  that  literary  and  intel- 
lectual barbarity  which  was  destined  to  mark  the  close  of 
the  scholastic  period.  However  this  may  be,  it  is  obvious 
that  the  defense  of  his  doctrines  was  with  him  no  mere 
pastime.  His  interest  in  them  was  profound  and  vital. 
On  their  practical  adoption,  in  the  spirit  in  which  he 
taught  them,  doubtless  depended,  in  his  view,  the  security 
of  the  church,  the  welfare  of  society,  the  present  moral 
safety,  and  the  final  salvation  of  men.  Who  does  not  see 
in  them  the  direct  reflex  of  that  spirit  of  unconditional 
obedience,  of  absolute,  unquestioning  respect  for  duty, 
which  will  hear  neither  of  reasons  nor  of  reasonings, 
which  distrusts  them,  and,  with  some  attempt  at  demon- 
stration, proclaims  them  necessarily  fruitless,  and  with  a 
certain  practical  sense  simply  and  absolutely  holds  fast  to 
the  things  which  reason  would  explain  —  the  spirit  com- 
mon to  all  nations,  as  the  Eomans  and  English,  with 
whom  the  notion  of  law  and  its  power  and  authority  is 
fundamental  ? 

A  still  more  striking  instance  illustrative  of  the  gen- 
eral thesis  of  this  chapter  is  furnished  in  the  cliaracter 
and  teaching  of  William  of  Occam,  county  of  Surrey, 
England.  As  at  once  a  scholastic  doctor,  and  the  most 
influential  herald  of  the  philosophical  doctrine  termed 
Nominalism,  he  is  a  living  symbol  of  scholasticism  in  the 
act  of  suicide.  The  scholastic  philosophy,  in  pursuing 
its  particular  end,  was  also,  however  blindly  and  in- 
efficiently, in  its  time  the  guardian  and  defender  of  the 
only  possible  positive,  (by  which  I  mean  affirniaiive,  the 
opposite  of  negative,  or  merely  critical,  agnostic,)  namely,  of 


46  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

idealistic  philosophy.  The  particular  and  only  conscious 
aim  of  scholasticism  was  the  rational  justification  of  eccle- 
siastical dogma.  The  only  way  in  which  it  could  accom- 
plish this  was  by  maintaining  a  doctrine  then  termed 
Realism.  How  theacceptauce  of  this  doctrine  was  deemed 
to  render  measurably  intelligible,  or  at  least  conceivable, 
the  central  mystery  of  christian  theology,  the  Divine 
Trinity,  it  were  beside  my  purpose  to  attempt  here  to 
explain.  It  is  enough  to  mention  that  the  problem  of 
Realism,  or  Nominalism,  was  really,  by  implication,  the 
problem  of  all  philosophy.  It  was  the  particular  form, 
namely,  which  this  problem  assumed  at  the  historic  epoch 
of  which  we  are  now  treating,  and  in  the  hands  of  men 
whose  main  and  conscious  interest  was  theological  and 
ecclesiastical,  rather  than  purely  and  properly  philosoph- 
ical. The  form  of  the  problem  was  therefore  in  a  measure 
accidental  and  imperfect.  Still,  I  repeat,  it  was  practi- 
cally the  only  form  in  which,  during  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
great  question  of  philosophy  received,  at  least  indirectly 
and  incidentally,  a  hearing.  This  question  is,  whether 
the  universe  of  existence,  relative  and  absolute,  is,  syn- 
thetically, rationally,  intrinsically  com]n-ehensible,  or  only 
analytically,  superficially  observable.  This  is  tantamount 
to  the  query,  whether  existence  is  knowable  per  se,  or  not. 
For,  if  thus  knowable,  it  is  such  only  as  the  expression  of 
kingly  mind,  of  compelling  reason,  which 

"  To  the  law  of  All  each  mcmluT  consecrating 
Bids  one  majestic  harmony  rcs'jund." 

If  not  knoyfuhle  per  se,  it  is  then  knowable  only  as  it  hap- 
pens to  strike,  or  to  be  reported  by  others  to,  each  indi- 
yidual,  only  in  the  impressions  which  each  or  all  receive, 


SEVERAL  ENGLISH   SCHOOLMEN".  47 

namely,  in  a  series  of  isolable,  but  more  or  less  orderly, 
phenomena,  of  which  we  only  know  that  we  experience 
(or,  in  the  language  of  present  English  psycliology,  feel) 
them,  but  of  which  no  really  causal  or  otherwise  rational 
and  ultimate  account  is  possible.  The  assertion  of  Keal- 
ism  amounted,  in  its  way  and  measure,  to  the  affirmation 
of  the  former  of  these  alternatives ;  of  Nominalism  to  the 
latter.  For  Eealism  the  reality  of  the  particular  —  the 
individual  concrete  thing  —  consisted  in  its  relation  to 
a  something  universal.  Only  in  its  relation  to  this  was 
it  conceivable,  knowable,  or  existentially  possible.  The 
universal  —  the  power  and  life  of  mind  —  might  be  con- 
ceived, Platonically,  as  that,  by  virtue  of  /'Ae/r  "partici- 
pation "  in  toliich  sensible  objects  acquired  whatever  of 
reality  they  possessed,  or,  with  Aristotle,  (changing  the 
phraseology  rather  than  the  intention,)  as  that  which, 
being  in  things,  constitutes  their  very  nature.  In  either 
case  the  essence  of  all,  even  the  most  individual  existence, 
was  either  directly  or  functionally  rational.  But  mediae- 
val Realism  did  not  remain  within  the  limits  of  this 
perfectly  safe  and  easily  defensible  generality.  It  asked 
itself  whether,  in  those  general  conceptions  of  genus  and 
species,  which  must  be  included  in  every  definition  of  a 
particular  object,  there  is  given  us  a  knowledge  of  so 
many  diverse,  but  still  universal,  rational  substances. 
Are  genera  and  species  real  entities?  We  should  call 
this  to-day  a  narrow  and  unfortunate,  because  utterly 
misleading,  way  of  putting  the  fundamental  problem  of 
philosophy.  For  this  problem  turns  upon  the  explana- 
tion of  the  particular  and  phenomenal.  But  if  genera 
and  species  are  regarded  as  so  many  distinct  substances, 
obviously  our  conception  of  them  is  assimilated  to  our 


48  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

conception  of  the  particular  and  phenomenal  objects 
which  they  should  explain.  In  other  words,  we  tend  to 
explain  the  particular  by  itself,  or,  what  amounts  to  the 
same  thing,  by  that  which  is  conceived  as  like  unto  it. 
Or,  still  otherwise  expressed,  we  seek  still  to  carry  the 
habit  of  the  analytic  method,  whereby  we  apprehend  the 
individually  concrete,  sensible  and  phenomenal,  over  into 
spheres  of  contemplation  to  which  only  the  method  of 
synthetic  compirehension  is  appropriate.  It  is  in  its  meas- 
ure the  old  story  of  sense  still  encroaching  on  reason.  It 
may  be  said  that  the  same  criticism  would  apply  to  the 
Platonic  theory  of  ideas.  It  certainly  does  apply  to  this 
theory,  if  we  regard  Plato  as  having  in  good  earnest 
meant  to  assert  the  particular,  sensibly  distinct,  substan- 
tive existence  of  the  ideas ;  but  not,  if  this  description  of 
the  theory  be,  as  such,  purely  "mythical"  (in  Plato's 
language)  or  figurative,  and  intended  only  as  a  way  of 
impressing  upon  the  imagination  the  grand,  underlying 
thought  that  the  reality,  as  well  as  the  intelligibility,  of 
things  is  exactly  proportioned  to  their  ideality,  and  that 
absolute  and  immutable  being  belongs  only  to  the  rational 
and  spiritual. 

The  ideal  or  rational  can  only  be  conceived  as  a  func- 
tion of  the  living  and  spiritual.  When,  therefore.  Realism 
affirmed  the  distinct,  substantial  reality  of  genera  and 
species,  it  gave  currency  to  a  false  conception,  in  so  far 
as  it  tended  to  suggest  that  these  were  so  many  numer- 
ically different  rational  "substances,"  possessing  the  same 
unintelligible  brute  particularity  of  existence  which  the 
stone  possesses,  and  therefore  needing  the  same  explana- 
tion which  it  needs.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  inasmuch 
or  in  as  far  as  the  assertion  of  Realism  was  tantamount  to 


SEVERAL    ENGLISH    SCHOOLMEN-.  49 

a  declaration  that  ultimate  reality  is  attained  not  through 
the  perceptions  of  sense,  but  through  the  conceptions 
of  mind,  it  was  the  voice  of  true  philosophy.  It  was  only 
necessary  that  these  conceptions  should  not  be  regarded 
as  corresponding  to  so  many  distinct  entities  (a  pseudo- 
idea  in  which  the  universal  and  rational  is  reduced  under 
forms  of  particularity  furnished  by  the  sensuous  imagina- 
tion), but  rather  as  pointing  to  ideal  types,  laws,  purposes, 
creative  acts  of  real,  i.e.  rational,  will-endowed  power,  and 
this  the  power  of  absolute,  divine  spirit.  Such  "  realism  " 
were  what  we  now  and  properly  understand  by  positive, 
not  negative  or  "subjective,"  philosophical  idealism. 

The  opposite  of  all  this  was  affirmed  by  Nominalism, 
and  William  of  Occam  was  its  influential  spokesman. 
On  the  plea  —  quite  justifiable  from  the  point  of  view  of 
that  side  or  tendency  of  mediaeval  Realism,  which  I  have 
just  been  criticising  —  that  "entities  must  not  be  multi- 
plied without  necessity"  {entia  non  sunt  nndtiplicanda 
praeter  necessitateni),  he  denied  the  substantive  existence 
of  universals  (genera  and  species)  as  an  hypothesis  wholly 
impertinent  to  the  explanation  of  individual  existence. 
So  far  this  was  but  a  repetition,  in  substance,  of  one  of 
Aristotle's  criticisms  of  the  Platonic  theory  of  ideas  (a 
criticism  perfectly  just,  if  in  Aristotle's  account  of  it 
that  theory  had  been  correctly  represented).  But  William 
of  Occam  went  further  than  this,  and  denied  that  in 
forming  general  conceptions  the  reason  of  man  was 
actually  and  successfully  stretching  out  toward  the  knowl- 
edge and  comprehension  of  something  more  real  than 
and  explanatory  of  individual,  sensibly-perceived  phe- 
nomena. Properly  speaking,  the  mind  had,  m  William's 
view,  no  power  of  "  stretching  out,"  or  of  actively  per- 
3 


50  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

forming  any  other  function.  In  all  its  cognitive  opera- 
tions it  is  strictly  passive;  it  is  led,  not  leads.  It  does 
not  penetrate  through  the  phenomenal  to  the  real.  It 
simply  receives,  through  the  senses,  impressions;  or  it 
observes,  not  its  own  actions  or  nature,  but  simply 
the  states  which  are  superinduced  upon  it.  In  clear 
and  definite  impressions,  he  held,  is  given  our  best  and 
most  adequate  knowledge  of  particular  objects.  Yet  this 
knowledge  is  relative  and  uncertain.  We  cannot  know 
that  our  impressions,  or  sensible  ideas,  are  correct  tran- 
scripts of  real  things.  More  likely  they  are  not.  At 
most  we  are  only  justified  in  believing  our  ideas  to  be 
signs  of  things,  which  for  the  rest  are  unknowable.  Of 
these  signs,  spoken  words  are  still  other  signs,  just  as, 
still  further,  written  words  are  signs  of  spoken  words. 
Our  general  conceptions  are  simply  indefinite,  but  par- 
ticular ideas,  containing  that  which  several  particular 
objects  (or  sign-ideas)  have  in  common,  but  lacking  the 
definite  lineaments  or  representative  value  of  any  of  them. 
Thus  all  our  ideas,  particular  and  general,  distinct  and 
confused,  being  essentially  nothing  but  (presumed)  signs 
of  objects  which  produce  them,  and  words  {nomina)  being 
signs  of  these  signs,  the  former  are  (as  signs)  of  the  same 
nature  as  the  latter,  and  may  hence  be  called  by  the  same 
name  as  the  latter  {nomina,  whence  the  term  Nominalism, 
or  termini,  owing  to  which  the  name  "  Terminisis'*'*  was 
also  given  to  Occam  and  his  followers). 

It  will  be  seen  that  this  doctrine  is  purely  critical  and 
negative.  It  denies  the  possibility  of  knowledge  of  real 
existence,  and  restricts  it  to  the  realm  of  phenomena 
passively  experienced  and  observed.  The  mind  of  man 
is  no  longer  allowed  to  contain  an  element  of  active,  and, 


SEVERAL   ENGLISH   SCHOOLMEN.  51 

in  its  sphere,  authoritative  reason.  For  the  rest,  it  can 
know  no  more  its  own  essence  than  that  of  the  world  or 
(except  as  matter  of  some  probability)  the  existence  of 
the  absolute  mind,  or  God.  That,  in  maintaining  these 
positions,  William  of  Occam  stands  in  the  same  rank  with 
the  most  celebrated  names  in  the  later  history  of  English 
speculation,  is  obvious,  or  will  certainly  become  so  before 
our  studies  are  finished.  Prof.  Ludwig  Noack,  in  his 
recently  published  Lexicon  of  the  History  of  Philosophy, 
very  accurately  terms  William  of  Occam  "  the  most  influ- 
ential forerunner  of  his  countrymen,  Francis  Bacon, 
Hobbes,  John  Locke,  and  John  Stuart  Mill." 

Along  with  this  philosophical  negativism,  William 
professed  to  keep  his  faith,  and  that,  too,  with  more  abso- 
lute, unquestioning  credulity  (for  that  it  was,  and  this  it 
is  that  generally  and  necessarily  takes  the  place  of  philo- 
sophical convictions  vainly  sought  or  lost)  than  his  partial 
master,  Duns  Scotus.  Li  William's  view  the  love  of 
God  is  a  duty  flowing  only  from  the  sovereign  will  of  God, 
whom  no  necessity  of  things  compelled  to  require  this 
love  of  us..  Indeed,  so  absolute  is  God's  power  and  free- 
dom, that  no  truth  of  philosophy  holds  concerning  him, 
and  William  simply  revels  in  paradox  while  enumerating 
some  of  the  physical  impossibilities  which  are  possible 
for  God.  Theological  and  "philosophical"  truth  are  thus 
made  utterly  disparate  and  apparently  contradictory.  But 
there  is  no  evidence  that  William,  like  so  many  a  century 
or  two  later,  while  professing  to  accept  both,  was  a  dis- 
sembler with  respect  to  his  professed  acceptance  of  the 
former.  In  this  respect  he  only  carried  to  the  wildest 
extreme  the  tendency  already  commented  on  in  Duns 
Scotus. 


52  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

Literature,  art,  religion,  a  vigorous,  moral,  social  and 
political  life,  are  preeminently  the  works  to  which  phi- 
losophy furnishes  the  corresponding  theory.  This  corre- 
spondence was  more  perfect  in  earlier  times,  when  the  life 
of  man  was  less  complex  and  variously  specialized,  than 
to-day.  The  most  flourishing  period  of  the  scholastic 
philosophy  was  coeval  with  the  best,  most  confident,  vig- 
orous life  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  most  of  the  directions 
just  enumerated.  Its  self-extinction  was  contempora- 
neous with  the  beginning  of  a  period  of  barbarity,  into 
whose  darkness  the  light  of  the  Renaissance  was  destined 
finally  to  shine,  with  truly  regenerating  effect.  The  re- 
vival of  learning  and  the  reformation  of  religion  were  at 
once  cause  and  sign  of  a  new  youth  of  the  Occidental 
mind.  Some  of  its  grandest  products  we  shall  contem- 
plate in  our  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  III. 

ENGLISHMEN  OF  THE  RENAISSANCE— SPENSER,  DAVIES, 
HOOKER. 

The  revival  of  learning  and  the  religious  reformation 
reached  their  fulfillment  in  England  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. The  tree  of  human  life  blossomed  anew,  and  what 
magnificent  and  abundant  fruit  it  bore  in  England  is 
known  to  every  student  of  the  Elizabethan  period  of  Eng- 
lish literature.  It  is  a  matter  of  the  deepest  significance  to 
note  the  precise  nature  of  the  nourishment,  which  quick- 
ened and  supported  this  new  and  masterly  life,  and  of  the 
ways  in  which  it  actively,  spontaneously,  powerfully,  suc- 
cessfully manifested  itself. 

The  revival  of  learning  meant,  so  far  as  it  concerns  the 
history  of  philosophy,  the  revival,  and  restoration  to 
lienor,  of  Platonism.  And  what  was  that,  in  distinction 
from  Aristotelianism,  which  had  been  so  completely  ab- 
sorbed, in  form  and  substance,  into  the  Scholastic  phi- 
losophy? I  admit  —  every  careful  student  admits  —  no 
absolute  contrast  between  Platonism  and  Aristotelianism. 
Aristotle  was  the  true  disciple,  though  a  critical  one,  of 
Plato.  Aristotle  was  the  real  continuator  of  Plato,  more 
than  the  members  of  the  Academic  school,  in  which  the 
tradition  of  his  teaching  was  guarded.  Both  Plato  and 
Aristotle  held  to  the  same  fundamental  truth  of  Idealism. 
For  both,  essential  reality  was  not  material,  but  spiritual; 

the  material,  as  such,  or  absolutely  considered,  was  non- 
53 


54  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

essential,  non-real.  For  both,  life  {i.e.  being)  was,  in 
Aristotle's  phrase,  "energy  of  mind."  Nor  were  it  true 
to  say  that  the  way  in  which  Aristotle  conceived  the 
same  ultimate  philosophical  truth  to  be  reached  and 
apprehended,  was  inherently  difiFerent  from  Plato's  way. 
If  for  Plato  this  result  was  only  reached  through  a  dia- 
lectic of  definition,  and  division,  and  hypothesis,  by  which 
the  clouds  of  mere  sensuous  opinion  were  scattered,  and 
the  soul  permitted  either  directly  or  through  vivid  rem- 
iniscence to  behold  the  absolute  reality,  it  is  a  similar 
work  which,  in  Aristotle's  view,  is  accomplished  through 
analysis  and  reasoning;  these  simply  clear  the  mental 
vision  so  that  it  may  perceive,  and  directly  know,  what 
cannot  be  demonstrated.  The  difference  between  Plato 
and  Aristotle  is  the  difference  between  poetry  and  unim- 
passioned  prose.  Plato,  in  spite  of  his  attribution  of 
unintelligence  (or  rather  of  an  "  unconscious  intelli- 
gence ")  to  poets,  is  himself  nevertheless  the  most  remark- 
able specimen  of  an  intelligent  poet.  He  is  the  intelligent 
poet  of  philosophy,  rapt  with  the  moral  power  and  fas- 
cination of  philosophic  truth,  and  in  his  wonderful  dia- 
logues bringing  its  resistless  spell  nearer  home  to  tiie 
mind  and  heart  of  humanity  than  any  other  one  wiiom 
this  earth  has  been  privileged  to  see.  Accordingly,  Plato's 
writings  are  real  poems,  exhibiting  the  highest  power  of 
unreflecting  art,  as  well  as  the  subtlest  force  of  conscious 
reason.  Note  the  point  well.  In  the  case  of  Plato  reason 
is  all  aflame  with  feeling,  but  not  mastered  by  it.  He 
has  not  simply  the  acute  perception,  but  the  warm  im- 
pression of  eternal  and  essential  being  —  of  truth,  beauty, 
goodness  —  as  existing  absolutely  in  a  purely  intelligible 
world  {i.e.  in  a  real  world,  for  no  "world,"  but  such  an 


ENGLISHMEN   OF  THE   RENAISSANCE.  55 

one  as  adapts  itself  to  rational  intelligence,  can  for  a  mo- 
ment substantiate  its  claim  to  be  called  absolutely  real), 
and  as  the  only  sources  of  reality  in  the  sensible  world, 
and  he  is  consequently  enabled  with  the  electrical  effect- 
iveness of  a  poetic  touch  to  deliver  this  impression  to 
mankind.  With  Aristotle,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  less  the 
intoxicating  sense  of  the  transcendent  glory  of  the  abso- 
lute which  lends  him  power,  although  even  he  exhibits 
a  pathos  of  simplicity  in  his  account  of  the  blessedness 
of  the  divine  life  of  pure  thought.  But  he  is  no  poet. 
The  rather,  he  altogether  clips  off  the  wings  of  Pegasus. 
Plato's  imagery  is  to  him  as  nought,  or  else  is  so  mis- 
understood by  him  that  he  mistakes  it  for  strict,  sober 
doctrine,  and,  in  attacking  it,  attacks,  accordingly,  a  man 
of  straw.  Aristotle  is  systematic,  expository,  followmg 
up  in  analytical  detail  the  application  of  theory  to  con- 
crete cases.  In  Plato  we  have  philosophy  and  literature 
combined.  In  Aristotle  it  is  philosophy  in  abstract, 
minutely  reasoned,  and  thoroughly  didactic  form,  that 
is  presented  to  us.  Broadly  considered,  the  two  philoso- 
phers supplement  and  complete  each  other.  But  in 
universal,  intensive  power,  the  power  to  address  and  to 
uplift  men,  Plato  is  as  far  superior  to  Aristotle  as  the 
whole,  undivided,  winged  spirit  is  superior  to  exclusive, 
plodding,  analyzing  intellect.  In  as  far,  then,  as  the 
revival  of  ancient  learning  meant  the  restoration  of  the 
knowledge  of  Platonism  and  a  renewed  interest  in  it,  it 
is  obvious  that  it  could  not  but  be  accompanied  by  a 
thoroughly  renovating  and  regenerating  influence  upon 
every  faculty  of  man.  And  this,  particularly,  when  it 
fell  upon  soil  previously  prepared  by  the  infiltration  of 
the  purest  conceptions  of  christian  faith.     Once  before, 


56  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

too,  there  had  been  a  new,  or  revived,  Platonism.  It  was 
in  the  last,  dying  centuries  of  Greek  and  Roman  pagan- 
ism, in  the  so-called  Neo-Platonic  school.  But  then  it 
was  pitted  against  Christianity,  and  although  in  its  first 
developments,  in  men  like  Plotinus  and  Porphyry,  it  bore 
occasional  fruits  of  burning,  mystic  ecstasy,  yet  its  pure 
light  was  speedily  quenched  by  a  flood  of  foreign,  earthy 
accretions,  doctrinal  and  practical.  But  when,  at  the 
epoch  of  the  Renaissance,  it  was  taken  up  anew  into  the 
elements  of  our  christian  civilization,  regarded  no  longer 
as  the  sole  light  of  the  world,  but  nevertheless  at  once  and 
gratefully  recognized  as  a  light,  and  that  a  pure  and 
grand,  and,  in  its  measure,  vivifying  one,  then  it  not 
simply  kindled  a  new  flame,  it  also  quickened  a  flame 
already  existing  —  the  flame  of  ciiristian  knowledge,  faith, 
and  aspiration,  planted  in  the  very  nerve  and  sinew  of 
the  modern  mind. 

If  Socrates,  Plato's  revered  master,  had  made  the 
maxim  "Know  thyself"  the  corner-stone  of  his  teaching, 
the  sum  and  substance  of  Platonism  was  that  deeper  and 
more  accurate  self-knowledge,  which  is  the  direct  way  to 
the  recognition  of  the  divine.  True  self-knowledge  was 
the  priestess  of  divinity.  In  like  manner  the  purer  chris- 
tian doctrine  made  man  at  once  the  rightful  son,  and  heir, 
and  image  of  God.  Obviously  the  renewed  knowledge 
and  love  of  Platonism  could  not  but  work  to  intensify 
and  deepen  the  sense  of  the  reality  of  the  christian  idea, 
held  always,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  more  or  less  as  an 
arbitrary  and  peremptory,  but  not  clearly  intelligible, 
truth  of  revelation.  An  inward  light  would  come  to  meet 
the  light  supposed  to  be  purely  external  and  simply 
authoritative. 


ENGLISHMEN   OF  THE   RENAISSANCE.  57 

I  need  not  refer  in  detail  to  the  incidents  in  the  story 
of  the  revival  of  Platonism  —  to  its  first  enraptured  culti- 
vation in  Italy,  when  art  was  preparing  for  its  loftiest, 
lustiest  flights,  to  the  schools  founded  for  its  study,  and 
to  the  movement  whereby  it,  as  a  part  of  "  the  Italian 
influence,"  was  conveyed  to  English  soil.  It  is  enough 
that  I  recall  here  the  "  christianized  Platonism  "  of  that 
"  poet's  poet,"  Edmund  Spenser,  tlie  first  great  thoughtful 
singer  of  the  Eliziibethan  age.  No  soul  more  gentle  than 
his,  none  more  delicately  alive  to  the  impressions  of  hor- 
ror or  distress  caused  by  the  existence  of  abundant  sin 
and  sorrow,  hypocrisy  and  all  vice,  in  view  of  which  his 
*' Muses"  cry  out,  in  their  "Teares," 

"  So  wander  we  all  carefull,  cotnfortlesse." 

Yet  not  altogether  "comfortlesse"  was  he.  And  you  have 
but  to  turn  to  the  "Hymnes"  "in  Honour  of  Love,"  and  "in 
Honour  of  Beautie,"  and  the  hymns  "of  Heavenly  Love" 
and  "of  Heavenly  Beautie,"  to  learn  what  the  nature  of 
this  comfort  was  and  whence  derived.  Everything  about 
Spenser  and  his  productions  is  "gentle"  (in  the  poet's 
well-chosen  phrase),  and  these  "Hymnes"  are  a  "gentle" 
quintessence  of  Platonic,  poetic,  christian  faith  (or  ra- 
tional sight).  It  matters  not  that  the  Platonism  may 
have  come  to  him  through  the  Italian  Petrarca,  or  tliat 
here  and  there  a  specifically  Aristotelian  definition  creeps 
into  his  chaste  lines;  as,  for  example,  in  the  second  of  the 
Hymnes  above  mentioned: 

"  For  of  the  soule  the  body  forme  doth  take; 
For  soule  is  forme  and  doth  the  bodie  make." 

The  argument  and  the  point  of  view  are  generally  Pla- 
tonic and  christian.    Here  we  find  the  same  sense  of  con- 


58  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

trast,  as  in  Plato,  between  the  imperfection  and  relative 
unreality  of  the  earth  and  all  which  sense  alone,  or  prin- 
cipally, perceives,  and  the  perfection,  the  absolute  worth 
and  reality,  of  the  intelligible,  supernal,  divine,  between 
the  spirit  struggling  to  be  free  and  spirit  free  indeed; 
between  the  semblance  and  the  reality  of  "  beautie." 

"  By  view  whereof  it  plainly  may  appeare, 

That  still  as  everything  doth  upward  tend, 
And  further  is  from  earth,  so  still  more  clears 
And  faire  it  growes,  till  to  its  perfect  end 
Of  purest  Beautie  it  may  at  last  ascend; 
Ayre  more  than  water,  fire  much  more  than  ayre, 
And  heaven  than  fire,  appeares  more  pure  and  fayre." 

Above  the  visible  heavens  are  other  heavens  and 
heavens  of  heavens,  of  "fairness"  ever  increasing  as  we 
ascend. 

"  Faire  is  the  heaven  where  happy  soules  have  place, 

In  full  enjoyment  of  felicitie. 
Whence  they  doe  still  behold  the  glorious  face 

Of  the  Divine  Eternall  Maiestie; 
More  faire  is  that  where  those  Idees  on  hie 

Enraunged  be,  which  Plato  so  admyred." 

And  pure  Intelligences  from  God  inspyred." 

Fairer  still  is  the  heaven  of 

"  Sovereigne  Powres  and  mightie  Potentates," 

and  "  heavenly  Dominations."  And  yet  still  more  fair, 
again,  are  the  heavens  of  Cherubim  and  Seraphim,  and  of 
Angels  and  Archangels.  But  ineffably  fair  is  that  high- 
est object  of  the  mind's  faith,  the  spirit's  dim  but  still 
enraptured  vision,  God,  the  absolute  beauty,  the  tran- 
scendent perfection. 


ENGLISHMEN    OF   THE    RENAISSANCE.  59 

"  Cease  then,  my  tongue  !  and  lend  unto  my  mynd 
Leave  to  bethinke  how  great  that  Beautie  is 
Whose  utmost  [out-most]  parts  so  beautifull  I  fynd; 
How  much  more  those  essentiall  parts  of  His, 
His  truth,  his  love,  his  wisdome,  and  his  blis. 
His  grace,  his  doome,  his  mercy,  and  his  might. 
By  which  he  lends  us  of  himself  a  sight !  " 

"  These  unto  all  he  daily  doth  display 

And  shew  himselfe  in  th'  image  of  his  grace. 
As  in  a  looking-glasse  through  which  he  may 
Be  seene  of  all  his  creatures  vile  and  base, 
That  are  unable  else  to  see  his  face,"  etc. 

"  The  meanes,  therefore,  which  unto  us  is  lent 

Him  to  behold,  is  on  his  workes  to  looke, 
Which  he  hath  made  in  beautie  excellent. 

And  in  the  same,  as  in  a  brasen  booke, 
To  read  enregistred  in  every  nooke. 

His  goodnesse,  which  his  beautie  doth  declare; 

For  all  that's  good  is  beautifull  and  fan-e." 

Yet  here,  as  in  the  Platonic  Symposium,  the  view  of 
present  beauty  is  but  a  stepping-stone  to  a  higher  point 
of  vision,  where  sense  is  "robbed,"  reason  "bHnded,"  and 
the  privileged  gazer  transported 

"from  flesh  into  the  spright." 

For  those  who  gain  this  point  —  and  the  "humanism"  of 
the  Renaissance  would  not  deny  this  "  sweete  content- 
ment" to  any  one  — 

"Their  joy,  their  comfort,  their  desire,  their  gaine, 
Is  fixed  all  on  that  which  now  they  see; 
All  other  sights  but  fayned  shadowes  bee." 

Evidently,  that  explanation  of  beauty,  which  reappears 
in   our  day  under  the   "advanced  scientific"  name  of 


60  BRITISH   THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

"physiological  {esthetics,"  could  not  satisfy  Spenser  (how- 
ever fully,  under  due  restrictions,  he  might  have  recog- 
nized its  scientific  interest),  who  accordingly  sings: 

*'  How  vainely  then  doe  ydle  wits  invent 

That  Beautie  is  nought  else  but  mixture  made 

Of  colours  faire,  and  goodly  temp'rament 

Of  pure  complexions,  that  shall  quickly  fade 

And  passe  away,  like  to  a  sommer's  shade; 
Or  that  it  is  but  comely  composition 
Of  parts  well  measur'd,  with  meet  disposition! 

"  Hath  white  and  red  in  it  such  wondrous  powre, 

That  it  can  pierce  through  th'  eyes  unto  the  hart, 

And  therein  stirre  such  rage  and  restless  stowre, 
As  nought  but  death  can  stmt  his  dolour's  smart? 

Or  can  proportion  of  the  outward  part 

Move  such  affection  in  the  inward  mynd, 
That  it  can  rob  both  sense  and  reason  blynd. 

"  Why  doe  not  then  the  blossomes  of  the  field, 

Which  are  arrayed  with  much  more  orient  hew. 

And  to  the  sense  most  daintie  odours  yield, 
Worke  like  impression  in  the  looker's  vew? 

Or  why  doe  not  faire  pictures  like  powre  shew 
In  which  oft-times  we  see  Nature  of  Art 
Exceld  in  perfect  limning  of  each  part'? 

"But  ah!  beleeve  me  there  is  more  then  so, 

That  workes  such  wonders  in  the  minds  of  men; 

1,  that  have  often  prov'd,  too  well  it  know. 
And  who  so  list  the  like  assayes  to  ken, 

Shall  find  by  trial,  and  confesse  it  then. 

That  Beautie  is  not,  as  fond  men  misdeeme. 
An  outward  shew  of  things  that  only  seeme." 

Thus  the  last  lines  intimate  that  this  theory  of  beauty 
was   for  Spenser  not  mere   theory.     It  was  capable   of 


ENGLISHMEN   OF  THE   RENAISSANCE.  61 

being  experimentally  tested,  and  had  been,  in  his  own 
case,  experimentally  verified;  not,  however  (and  natu- 
rally), by  sensible  tests  and  with  physical  instruments 
and  measurements,  but  in  the  living  experience  of  the 
human  spirit. 

Sucli,  then,  was  the  "comfort"  of  Edmund  Spenser. 
Nor  was  it  exclusively  prospective  or  individual.  The 
insight  which  inspired  it  enabled  him  to  see  in  the  very, 
apparent,  mutability  of  present  natural  objects  the  means 
by  which  they  (in  his  language) 

"their  being  doe  dilate; 
And,  turning  to  Iheuiselves  at  length  againe, 

Doe  worke  their  owne  perfection  so  by  fate: 
Then  over  them  Change  doth  not  rule  and  raigne: 
But  they  raigne  over  Change,  and  doe  then-  states  maintaine," 

Thus,  universally,  the  changing  and  phenomenal  had 
the  seat  and  type  of  its  present,  immediate  life  in  the 
changeless  efficacy  of  imperial  mind. 

The  like  inspiration  nerved  him  to  do  hopeful  and 
courageous  battle  in  his  poetry  against  all  impurity  and 
insincerity  in  the  life  of  man  in  Churcli  and  State.  The 
power  of  Spenser  is  that  resistless  power  of  gentleness 
which  made  the  Hebrew  psalmist  "great";  it  is  the 
power  of  a  new,  fresh  life,  with  that  grasp  of  synthetic 
insight  which,  in  its  highest,  most  real  and  character- 
istic phases,  necessarily  accompanies  and  constitutes  it;, 
it  is,  finally,  the  power  of  that  noblest  "common  sense," 
which  seeks  "reform"  not  simply  through  protest  and 
the  demand  for  "change  of  some  sort,"  but  by  fitly  feed- 
ing the  fountains  of  intelligence,  through  which  alone  a 
true  and  authentic  reform  can  be  maintained. 

An  interesting  and  instructive  illustration  of  the  hold 


62  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

which  poetry  and  philosophy  had  upon  cultivated  men  of 
affjiirs  in  this  masculine  epoch  is  furnished  in  a  poem 
written  by  Sir  John  Davies,  entitled  "  JS^osce  Teipsiun: 
This  oracle  expounded  in  two  Elegies.  Ist,  Of  Human 
Knowledge;  2d,  Of  the  Soul  of  Man,  and  the  Immortal- 
ity thereof."  Born  in  1569,  educated  at  Oxford,  early 
becoming  an  orphan,  the  author  in  his  early  manhood 
plunged  into  boisterous  dissipation  and  was  concerned 
with  Christopher  Marlowe  in  the  publication  of  a  book 
of  scandalous  verse,  which  "  was  condemned  by  the 
archbishop  to  be  burned."  Before  he  was  twenty-five 
years  old  he  had  written  a  poem  (which,  whether  it  was 
ever  completed  or  not,  now  exists  only  as  a  fragment) 
called  "Orchestra;  or,  a  Poem  on  Dancing."  The  con- 
ception of  the  poem  should  perhaps  rather  be  called  a 
conceit,  charmingly  imagined  and  gracefully  executed, 
and  at  the  same  time  characteristic  of  that  joyous  ideal- 
ism which  rides  upon  the  crest  of  every  high,  massive, 
powerful  wave  in  the  progress  of  human  culture.  The 
argument  requires  us  to  admit  that  all  the  movements  of 
the  universe,  in  magno  and  in  parvo,  of  worlds  and  of 
elements,  of  plants  and  animals,  of  men  and  angels,  are 
but  the  movements,  now  grave,  now  gay  and  joyous,  of 
one  all-comprising  dance. 

Dauciug  (bright  lady)  then  bcgau  to  be, 

When  the  first  seeds  whereof  the  woild  did  spring, 

The  fire,  air,  earth,  and  water  did  agree. 

By  Love's  persuasion,  Nature's  niiglity  king, 

To  leave  their  first  disordered  combating ; 

And  in  a  dance  such  measure  to  observe. 

As  all  the  world  their  motiou  should  preserve." 


ENGLISHMEN   OF  THE    RENAISSANCE.  63 

Exquisitely  and  daintily,  and  with  many  a  quaint 
fancy,  Sir  John  describes  what  his  poetic  eye  perceives 
of  dancing  motion  in  the  zephyr-touched  flowers,  in  the 
"turnings,  windings,  and  embracements''  of  "the  vine 
about  the  elm,"  in  the  water-nymph,  which 

"  arising  from  the  land, 
Leadeth  a  dance  with  her  long  watery  tram, 
Down  to  the  sea," 

in  the  "  round  dance  "  of 

"the  two  Bears,  whom  the  first  mover  flmgs 
With  a  short  turn  about  heaven's  axle-tree," 

as  also  in  all  the  other  movements,  "solemn,  grave  and 
slow,"  of  stars  and  heavenly  spheres.  We  easily  follow 
our  author  as  his  imagination  descries  the  semblance  of 
a  dance  also  in  the  physical  movements  of  men,  in 

"All  pomps,  and  triumphs,  and  solemnities," 

and  in  the  play  of  the  poetic  fancy.  But  when  grammar 
and  rhetoric,  as  instruments  of  poetry  and  eloquence, 
are  found  to  illustrate  the  same  theme,  in 

"the  parts 
Of  congruent  and  well  accordmg  speech," 

and  in  "  tropes "  and  "  figures,"  and  "  turnings  every 
way,"  the  smile,  in  which  we  find  ourselves  involuntarily 
indulging,  springs,  perhaps,  from  motives  tinged  quite 
as  much  by  a  perception  of  the  ludicrousness  as  of  the 
poetic  truth  of  the  conceit.  But  enough  of  this  poem, 
which  I  mention  thus  particularly  only  as  an  illustration 
of  the  thoughtful  and  graceful  buoyancy,  which  is  among 


64  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

the  more  striking  characteristics  of  the  intellectual  life 
of  the  Elizabethan  era. 

The  philosophical  poem  of  Sir  John  Davies,  to  which 
I  began  by  referring,  was  first  piiblisiied  in  the  year. 
1599,  and  a  second  edition  appeared  in  1G02.  Doubtless 
any  one,  who  should  now  take  up  and  read  the  poem,  would 
demur  to  the  judgment  of  the  anonymous  author  of  an 
edition  of  it  published  nearly  a  century  later  (in  1C97), 
who,  after  mentioning  that  in  it  "are  represented  the 
various  movements  of  the  mind,"  adds:  "at  which  we 
are  as  much  transported  as  with  the  most  excellent 
scenes  of  pa'ssion  in  Shakespeare  or  Fletcher."  Sir  John 
Davies  was  no  Shakespeare!  And  yet,  no  thoughtful 
reader  will  wonder  that,  in  the  words  of  a  writer  in  the 
last  edition  of  the  Eiicyclopcedia  Bri/annica,  ^^  its  force, 
eloquence  and  ingenuity,  no  less  than  the  modern  and 
polished  tone  of  its  periods,  made  it  at  once  extremely 
popular.  It  was  to  its  own  age  all  that  Pope's  Ei<safj  on 
Man  was  to  the  Georgian  period." 

After  an  exquisitely  graceful  Dedication  to  Queen 
Elizabeth,  the  author  descants  on  the  natural  intellectual 
blindness  of  man  as  now  constituted,  in  contrast  with  his 
first  estate.  Our  first  parents,  with  intellectual  eagle's 
eyes  could  look  on  the  eternal;  but,  through  their  "desire 
to  learn  "  the  knowledge  of  evil, 

"  Bats  they  became,  that  eagles  were  before." 

Now  the  soul  shrinks  from  contemplating  and  knowing 
herself,  on  account  of  her  present  deformity.  Still, 
affliction  can  make  her  withdraw  in  upon  herself,  and, 
adds  Sir  John,  quaintly, 

"This  mistress  lately  plucked  me  by  the  ear," 


ENGLISHMEN"   OF   THE    RENAISSANCE.  65 

leading  him  to  reflection  and  to  intellectual  discern- 
ment. 

A  full  account  of  the  psychology  expounded  in  this 
poem  and  of  the  arguments  advanced  for  the  immortality 
of  the  soul,  would  be  wearisome  and  beside  my  present 
purpose.  I  mention  only  a  few  points,  either  important 
for  our  argument,  or  curious. 

First,  then,  genuine  self-knowledge,  the  knowledge 
of  the  reality  and  nature  of  the  soul,  by  itself,  is  a  thing 
concerning  the  possibility  of  which  the  poet  has  no  ques- 
tion. True,  this  is  not  possible  without  some  infusion 
of  a  light  divine,  which  is  to  the  mental  eye  what  the 
sun-beams  are  to  the  physical  one.  But  guard  against 
supposing  that  Sir  John  Davies  could  be  led  to  assert  the 
indispensableness  of  this  light  only  out  of  deference,  or 
from  blind  subjection,  to  the  dictum  of  a  revealed  or 
currently  established  theology.  Christian  philosophy 
does  indeed  assert  this,  but,  not  only  christian  philoso- 
phy, all  systems  of  affirmative  (not  negative,  empirical, 
"  subjective  ")  Idealism,  be  they  called  after  the  names  of 
Plato  or  Aristotle,  of  Descartes,  Spinoza  or  Leibnitz,  of 
Berkeley,  Kant  or  Hegel,  also  assert,  in  some  form,  and 
of  necessity,  the  same  thing.  The  very  sense  of  philosoph- 
ical Idealism  is  to  put  and  represent  man  in  direct 
relation  with  the  Absolute  Mind,  so  that  his  light  is 
its  light,  and  its  strength  is  made  his.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  unhesitating  conviction  of  the  reality  of  self- 
knowledge  must  at  once  be  recognized  as  one  of  the  most 
obvious  elements  of  intellectual  and  moral  strength.  It 
is  contained,  however  unconsciously  —  and  it  would  in- 
dicate a  morbid  condition  to  be  too  conscious  of  it  — 
in  every  vigorous  manifestation  of  the  life  of  men,  and 


66  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

most  in  those  oases  in  the  history  of  civilization,  when 
hope,  and  confident  courage  and  resolve,  in  all  the  char- 
acteristic directions  of  man's  best  life,  run  high  and 
execution  follows  close  after  —  or,  in  other  words,  in  what 
may  be  termed  the  blossoming-times  of  human  culture. 
In  this  respect  it  is  in  marked  contrast  with  that  impo- 
tence of  uncertainty,  or  of  agnosticism,  which,  in  the 
long  winters  that  have  generally  followed  these  times, 
has  sprung  up  on  the  soil  of  a  sensualistic  psychology, 
proclaiming  that  the  soul  can  only  know  itself  as  a  series 
of  states  or  as  a  "  bundle  of  perceptions." 

"The  soul  a  substance  and  a  spirit  is,"  says  Sir  John 
Davies.  The  senses  are  its  servants,  not  separate  from  it, 
but  a  power  "within  a  greater  power."  They  furnish 
materials  which  the  soul  elaborates,  controls,  and,  if  need 
be,  corrects.    Happily  writes  our  author: 

"Sense  outside  knows,  the  soul  through  all  things  sees: 
Sense,  circumstance;  she  doth  the  substance  view: 
Sense  sees  the  bark,  but  she  the  life  of  trees; 
Sense  hears  the  sounds,  but  she  the  concords  true." 

The  soul  is  then  defined  in  its  distinction  from  the  body, 
and,  after  Aristotelian  and  scholastic  precedent,  vegeta- 
tive, sensitive  and  intellectual  powers  are  attributed  to  it, 
of  the  first  of  which  it  is  said, 

"  This  pow'r  to  Martha  may  compar'd  be. 
Who  busy  was,  the  household  things  to  do." 

Poor  "careful  and  troubled"  Martha!  -What  would  she 
have  said  if,  in  addition  to  the  other  ignominious  pur- 
poses of  comparison  for  which  she  has  been  obliged  these 
long  centuries  to  serve,  she  had  known  that  the  flagging 
fancy  of  an  English   poet-philosopher  would  one  day 


ENGLISHMEN"   OF  THE    RENAISSAN"CE.  67 

alight  upon  her  name  to  illustrate  the  vegetative  function 
of  the  soul?  In  wrestling  with  the  subject  of  the  five 
senses,  in  their  order,  the  muse  is  fairly  worsted.  At 
least  she  pants  and  limps  in  a  manner  painful  to  observe. 
Still,  while  on  the  subject  of  the  sense  of  taste,  our 
author  manages  to  attract  our  attention,  by  observing 
that  it,  since  the  invention  of  the  art  of  cookery,  has 
proved  more  murderous  than  "sword,  famine  or  pesti- 
lence." And  as  regards  the  sense  of  smell,  his  conclusion 
is  comparatively  derisive,  one  would  say,  for  he  declares 

that  — 

"They  smell  best  that  do  of  nothing  smell." 

There  follow  excellent  stanzas  relative  to  "Wit"  (or 
Intellect)  and  "Will,"  the  former  "the  pupil  of  the 
soul's  clear  eye,"  and  the  latter  the  "emperor"  among 
the  soul's  faculties ;  to  truth  and  goodness,  as  the  object 
of  wit's  discriminating  search  and  of  the  will's  choice,  in 
which  connection  we  read, 

"Will  is  the  prince,  and  Wit  the  counsellor"; 

and  finally  to  God,  who  is 

"Alpha  to  Wit,  Omega  to  the  Will." 

In  an  extremely  beautiful  comparison,  extending  through 
several  stanzas.  Sir  John  Davies  likens  the  soul  to  a  prin- 
cess who  accepts  the  attentions  of  many,  but  gives  herself 
finally  to  a  foreign  prince  wliom  she  has  not  seen,  and  of 
whom  she  knows  through  his  ambassadors.  This  foreign 
prince  is  God.  His  ambassadors  are  all  objects  of  knowl- 
edge. 

With  considerable  appositeness  of  argument,  and  clear- 
ness of  exposition.  Sir  John  Davies  sets  forth  his  thor- 
oughly spiritualistic  psychology,  and  develops  numerous 
3* 


68  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

considerations  tending  to  establish  the  doctrine  of  the 
soul's  immortality,  all  founded  on  the  best  philosophy  the 
world  had  produced,  and  pervaded  by  an  obvious  breath 
of  sincere  and  independent  conviction ;  this,  too,  in  spite 
of  the  apparent  over-confidence  (and  very  mediocre  po- 
etry) of  the  concluding  stanza : 

"And  if  thou,  hke  a  child,  didst  fear  before, 
Buing  in  the  dark,  where  thou  didst  nothing  see; 
Now  I  have  brought  thee  torchhght,  fear  no  more; 
Now  when  thou  dys't,  thou  canst  not  hood-winked  be." 

The  poem  may  stand  as  a  document  to  prove  what  was 
the  thoughtful  faith  of  the  best  type  of  English  gentle- 
men in  his  day.  Such  faith,  or  the  like  of  it,  made  thb 
Spensers,  the  Sidneys  —  I  will  even  add  in  the  same  breath 
with  these  choice  names,  t;he  Davieses  of  the  Elizabethan 
era,  England's  golden  age.  Of  it,  and  of  the  whole 
grander  and  more  comprehensive  philosophy  of  existence 
which  it  implies,  considered  as  verifying  itself  in  the  lives 
and  actions  of  those  who  live  in  practical  conformity  with 
it,  and  so  live  successfully,  or  else,  denying  and  sinning 
against  it,  live  in  vain,  William  Shakespeare  is  the  his- 
torian and  mouthpiece.  It  was  the  true  gold  of  Eng- 
land's "golden  age,"  as  it  is  also  the  principle  of  all  that 
is  truly  golden  in  the  life  and  history  of  mankind. 

I  may  mention  as  of  interest,  before  leaving  Sir  John 
Davies  and  his  poem,  that  the  author  subsequently  de- 
voted himself  with  active  zeal  to  political  affairs,  holding 
distinguished  positions  of  trust  in  the  gift  of  tiie  crown, 
serving  the  nation  in  parliament,  dying  in  163G,  shortly 
after  his  appointment  as  Lord  Ciiief  Justice  of  P^ngland, 
and  leaving  behind  him  an  enviable  reputation  for  trust- 
worthiness and  uprightness. 


ENGLISHMEN   OF  THE   RENAISSANCE.  69 

Along  with  the  revival  of  learning  I  mentioned,  at  the 
beginning  of  this  chapter,  the  religions  reformation  of  the 
sixteenth  century  as  one  of  the  most  noteworthy  factors  in 
the  movement  by  which  the  Occidental  mind  was  regen- 
erated. The  two  factors  wrought  indeed  together  and 
aided  each  other.  No  genuine  Renaissance  through  the 
restoration  of  letters  and  learning,  and  no  genuine  reno- 
vation in  religion  was  possible,  which  should  have  refer- 
ence to,  or  affect,  externals  alone.  An  ostensible  Renais- 
sance of  this  kind  could,  in  the  realms  of  letters  and 
philosophy,  at  best,  eventuate  in  nothing  more  than  mere, 
unenlivened  erudition,  in  that  dry-as-dust  formalism  of 
scholarship,  which 

*    *    *    "  evermore  to  empty  rubbish  clings, 
With  greedy  hand  gral.is  after  precious  things, 
And  leaps  for  joy  when  some  poor  worm  it  fingers." 

A  real  revival  of  learning  and  of  letters  could  be  deemed 
to  take  place,  not  simply  when  new  materials  (or  old  ma- 
terials restored)  were  placed  in  scholars'  hands,  but  only 
when  in  the  minds  of  scholars  themselves  there  was  a 
revived  sense  of  spiritual  dignity  and  creative  power,  suf- 
ficient to  use  these  materials  as  means  and  occasions  for 
new  exhibitions  of  that  inexhaustible  genius  which  is  in 
man,  and  which,  in  the  highest  sense,  constitutes  him. 
And  this  is  precisely  what  happened  in  the  time  termed 
"of  tlie  Renaissance,"  and  it  is  also  precisely  in  this  self- 
regenerating  movement  of  the  human  mind  that  the 
significance  of  the  Renaissance  consists,  and  not  in  any 
accidentally-occasioned  emigration  of  Greek  scholars  and 
importation  of  ancient  manuscripts  from  Constantinople : 
the  demand  for  these  scholars  and  manuscripts  preceded 


70  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

the  supply,  and  it  has  been  well  remarked  that,  had  not 
the  taking  of  the  capital  of  the  Eastern  empire  by  the 
Turks  driven  the  scholars  westward,  they  would  have  been 
induced  to  go  in  that  direction  with  their  treasures  by  the 
growing  demand  for  them. 

In  like  manner  the  religious  reformation,  if  it  had  any 
significance,  did  not  derive  this  from  changes  eflfected  in 
the  forms  of  worship  or  the  wording  of  dogmas  alone.  Its 
iconoclasm  is  only  its  negative  and  accidental  side.  Its 
positive  side,  its  strength  and  life,  lay  in  the  new  and 
better  life  in  morality  and  religion,  of  which  living  man 
felt  the  possibility,  for  which  his  deepest  aspirations  were 
stirred,  and  of  which,  with  something  of  a  sense  of  cre- 
ative power  to  will  and  to  do  (while  God  wrought  in  him), 
he  was  resolved  to  secure  the  realization. 

In  England  the  Reformation  fell  upon  a  soil  of  national 
disposition  and  political  circumstance  well  fitted  to  re- 
ceive it.  Both  in  poetry  and  in  theology  it  had  more  than 
one  forerunner  among  the  English.  It  is  enough  if  I 
mention  the  poet  Langland,  whose  "  Vision  of  Piers  the 
Ploughman"  spoke  the  language  and  the  mind  of  the 
English  common  people,  and  became,  says  Stopford 
Brooke,  "  the  book  of  those  who  desired  social  and  church 
reform,"  and  John  Wyclif.  On  the  other  hand,  against 
the  danger  which  every  reformation  runs,  of  evaporating 
in  mere  words  of  noisy  protest,  or  degenerating  into  simple 
iconoclasm  or  pure  antinomianism,  no  safer  barrier  could 
anywhere  be  found  than  in  the  minds  and  hearts  and 
habits  of  a  people  who,  on  the  one  hand,  were  deeply  in 
earnest  and  sincere,  and,  on  the  other,  pointed,  as  to  one 
of  their  greatest  glories,  to  a  Magna  Charta,  a  Great 
Charter,  or  lesson,  at  once  of  rights  and  of  duties,  or,  in 


ENGLISHMEN"    OF   THE    RENAISSANCE.  71 

other  words,  of  laio.  The  nation  whose  public,  political 
life  had  imbedded  itself  in  an  entity  like  the  British  Con- 
stitution, not  one  written  instrument,  but  an  organic 
growth  of  multitudinous  roots  and  branches,  and  still 
unfinished,  a  body  of  precedent,  and  definition,  and  pre- 
scription, at  once  the  outcome  and  the  support  of  the 
spirit  of  order., — that  nation  had  peculiar  qualifications 
for  taking  up  the  work  of  the  Eeformation,  and,  by  fixing 
it  in  forms  of  positive  faith  and  institution,  protecting  its 
light  and  life  from  the  destructive  excesses,  the  chaos  and 
darkness,  of  pure  lawlessness. 

And,  indeed,  in  the  epoch  which  we  are  considering, 
i.e.  durmg  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  one  of  the  best 
representatives  of  what  may  be  termed  the  spirit  of  order 
in  Protestantism,  Richard  Hooker,  stood  forth,  equally 
conspicuous  for  his  learning  and  his  eloquence,  at  once  to 
explain  and  defend  the  authority  of  law  and  to  illustrate 
the  power  and  riches  of  the  English  tongue. 

Born  in  the  year  1554,  Richard  Hooker,  still  in  the 
prime  of  life,  died  in  the  first  year  of  the  following  cen- 
tury. He  was  favored  after  his  death  with  having  for  his 
biographer  a  person  of  no  less  celebrity  than  quaint  Izaak 
Walton,  whose  pictures  of  Hooker's  alleged  bashful  hu- 
mility and  meekness  are  deemed  to  bear  the  impress 
more  of  the  writer's  peculiar  imagination  than  of  real- 
ity. These  qualities,  indeed,  if  we  may  trust  Walton, 
must  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  unfortunate- 
ness  of  Hooker's  married  life;  for,  says  his  biographer, 
*'  the  reader  has  liberty  to  believe  that  his  modesty  and 
dim  sight  were  some  of  the  reasons  why  lie  trnstul  Mrs. 
Churchman  to  choose  his  wife.''''  H'  Hooker's  sight  was 
"dim,"  it  was  not  dimmer  than  the  sight  of  Love,  who 


72  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

notoriously  is  blind  and  yet  never  blunders.  Hookw 
evidently  erred  in  not  choosing  his  own  wife  liimself. 
Placed,  as  a  minister  of  the  Established  Church,  in  a 
position  which  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  enter  the 
lists  of  controversy  against  Puritanism,  he  did  this,  in 
Hallam's  phrase,  "like  a  knight  of  romance  with  arms  of 
nobler  temper."  But  mere  controversy,  and  especially  of 
a  personal  kind,  could  not  but  be  flatly  odious  to  him. 
Accordingly,  at  his  own  request,  he  was  removed  to  a 
living  in  the  country,  where,  in  his  own  words,  he  could 
behold  God's  blessing  spring  out  of  his  mother  earth 
and  eat  his  own  bread  without  oppositions.  His  mind 
meanwhile  was  teeming  with  the  conception  of  a  vast 
work  which  should  remove  grounds  of  controversy  by 
setting  forth  truth  in  her  larger,  grander,  catholic  linea- 
ments. The  work  was  to  be  entitled  "Eight  Books  of 
the  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity,"  and  of  the  eight  five 
were  completed  and  published  in  the  author's  lifetime. 
Of  these,  again,  it  is  the  first  one,  "  Concerning  Laws  and 
their  several  Kinds  in  General,"  that  chiefly  interests  us 
here. 

On  the  nature  of  Hooker's  greatness  I  quote  here  a 
page  from  the  Introduction  prefixed  by  Mr.  R.  W.  Church 
to  his  recent  edition  of  Book  I  of  Plooker's  work. 

"No  one  [before  Hooker]  had  thought  of  more  than  attack  or 
defense,  on  the  well-known  ground  and  with  the  customary  well- 
known  arguments,  turned  to  such  account  as  each  writer's  skill 
and  resources  allowed.  The  grasp  and  largeness,  the  peculiar 
power  which  was  attracted  by  great  ideas,  and  also  at  home  among 
the  minute  intricacies  of  scholastic  argument,  above  all,  the  poet- 
ical fire,  the  self-devotion  and  enthusiasm  of  literary  creation,  the 
romantic   belief  in  the  deep  and  universal   interest  which  was 


ENGLISHMEN"   OF   THE    RENAISSANCE.  73 

masked  under  what  seemed  dry  and  subtle  questions,  and  the 
romantic  passion  to  accomplish  a  work  which  should  bring  out 
their  significance  in  regard  to  what  all  men  understand  and  wish 
for, —  this  had  been  wanting;  for  all  this  means  really  genius;  and 
the  marked  ability  which  is  to  be  seen  in  the  controversialists  on 
both  sides  was  something  much  short  of  genius.  .  .  .  The  story 
told  by  Walton  of  the  learned  English  Romanist,  Cardinal  Allen 
or  Dr.  Stapleton,  who  said  to  Pope  Clement  VIII  that  he  had  never 
met  with  an  English  book  whose  writer  deserved  the  name  of  an 
author  till  he  read  the  first  four  books  of  a  '  poor  obscure  English 
priest,  on  Laws  and  Church  Polity,'  at  least  expresses  the  fact  that 
Hooker  is  really  the  beginner  of  what  deserves  to  be  called  English 
literature,  in  its  theological  and  philosophical  province." 

In  carrying  out  his  work  Hooker  displays  a  profound 
knowledge  of  philosophy  in  its  best  historic  forms,  but 
his  power  and  originality  lie  especially  in  his  own  quick- 
ened and  quickening  sense  and  comprehension  of  the 
notion  of  law  and  all  that  it  implies.  Well  may  Mr. 
Church  say: 

"The  fundamental  idea  of  law,  with  its  consequences  and  appli- 
cations, .  .  .  appears  to  have  absorbed  and  possessed  him," 

adding  that 

"it  shines  through  all  his  writings:  what  we  have  of  his  may  be 
described  as  one  great  work  on  this  theme,  beginning  with  frag- 
ments, such  as  the  Sermons;  then,  with  one  completed  portion 
intervening  in  the  middle,  the  first  five  Books  on  the  Laws  of 
Ecclesiastical  Polity;  and  ending  with  fragments,  the  uncertain  or 
unfinished  Books  VI  to  VIII." 

That  the  realm  of  law  is  coextensive  with  the  realm  of 
existence,  so  far  as  this  is  open  to  rational  comprehension, 
is  it  at  once  obvious.  For  existence  is  activity,  and  only 
that  activity  which  is  agreeable  to  law  is  orderly,  and 


74  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

only  that  which  is  orderly  is  intelligible;  chaos  is  to 
human,  or  any  other,  reason  identical  with  darkness  or 
nought.  Law,  then,  is  an  expression,  a  requirement,  and 
a  fulfillment  of  order,  and  so  of  reason,  and  so  of  life  or 
being.  But  how  is  law  established?  By  chance,  by  an 
inherent  fatal  necessity  of  things,  by  an  arbitrary,  un- 
reasoning fiat  of  absolutely  sovereign  divinity?  None  of 
these  hypotheses,  popular  as  one  or  all  of  them  may  at 
times  have  been  or  still  be,  will  satisfy  for  a  moment  the 
requirements  of  healthy  reason.  Healthy  reason  is  vital- 
ized reason,  and  vitalized  reason  is  self-conscious  spirit, 
the  characteristic  essence  of  man,  and  the  true  and  only 
agent  of  specifically  philosophic  cognition.  I  may  call  it, 
therefore,  preeminently  philosophic  reason,  in  distinction 
from  purely  discursive  ratiocination.  If  the  latter  moves 
in  logical  distinctions,  pulling  ideas  or  groups  of  ideas 
apart,  isolating,  discriminating,  and  then  comparing  and 
arguing  from  single  relations  apparent  among  the  ideas, 
or  parts  of  ideas,  dissected,  it  is  the  function  of  the 
former  to  gras}),  and  to  grasp  loholes,  of  which  the  ideas 
in  question  are  but  the  partial  framework,  to  seize  the 
richly  colored  life,  of  which  they  are,  taken  separately, 
the  achromatic  and  oft  misleading  symbols,  the  simplicity 
of  truth,  in  the  light  of  which  their  complexity  is  resolved 
into  a  ministrant  harmony.  And  my  declaration  is,  that 
reason,  so  considered,  finds  and  can  find  in  all  the  objects 
of  its  contemplation  only  itself,  or  that  which  is  cognate 
to  itself.  It  knows  no  existence  of  which  spirit  is  not  the 
power  and  tiie  life.  It  knows  no  activity  of  which  reason, 
the  light  of  spirit,  does  not  prescribe  the  law.  It  knows 
no  law,  the  operation  or  observance  of  which  does  not 
tend  to  good,  to  harmony,  to  beauty,  and  which  has  not, 


ENGLISHMEN  OF  THE   RENAISSANCE.  75 

therefore,  literally  or  virtually,  the  sense  of  a  requirement. 
For  it,  accordingly,  accident,  or  fixte,  or  the  brute  might 
of  unrestrained,  unenlightened  will  can  be  no  source  of 
law,  and  it  can  only  regard  those  who,  in  any  attempted 
explanation  of  law,  have  recourse  to  them,  as  taking 
refuge  in  an  asylum  ignorantiac,  i.e.  as  explaining  noth- 
ing. Nor  is  this  view  peculiar  to  philosophic  speculation 
merely;  it  is  (at  least  implicitly)  that  of  the  mind  of  man 
when  it  asserts  itself  in  its  healthiest,  most  unrestrained, 
and  hence  most  natural,  rational  and  necessary  acts  of 
knowledge,  and  we  need  not,  therefore,  be  surprised  to 
find  it  asserted  anew  in  that  period  of  the  modern  mind's 
new  life,  self-knowledge  and  intellectual  mastership,  a 
section  of  which  we  are  now  contemplating. 

It  is  this  view  which  Hooker,  with  rare  el  iquence  and 
unusual  learning  and  penetration,  sets  forth.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  empire  of  law  is  universal.  On  the  other,  its 
source  is  to  be  found  in  reason  divine.  The  laws  which 
God,  the  possessor  and  impersonation  of  this  reason,  has 
established,  are  not  ordinances  proceeding  from  a  sover- 
eign will,  wrested  from  the  control  of  perfect  reason  (as 
William  of  Occam,  for  example,  had  taught).  "  They 
err,"  declares  Hooker,  "who  think  that  of  the  will  of 
God  to  do  this  or  that  there  is  no  reason  besides  his 
will.  Many  times  no  reason  is  known  to  us;  but  that 
there  is  no  reason  thereof  I  judge  it  most  unreasonable 
to  imagine,  inasmuch  as  he  worketh  all  things  Kara  rijv 
l^ouXijv  TOO  OsXy]iiaro':  aurou,  not  Only  according  to  his  own 
will,  but  the  counsel  of  his  oivn  will''''  But  the  ends 
which  perfect  reason  can  propose  to  itself,  can  only  be 
ends  of  beauty  and  goodness,  and  a  law  necessarily  re- 
lating, not  to  things  at  rest,  but  to  movement,  change, 


76  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

"operation,"  we  have  the  elements  of  the  following  defi- 
nition: "A  law,  therefore,  generally  taken,  is  a  directive 
rule  unto  goodness  of  operation."  There  is  here,  it  will 
be  noticed,  a  conspicuous  absence  of  that  secondary 
notion  of  law  which  is  given  in  the  perfected  results  of 
the  experimental  and  observational  sciences  o( phe7ionie7ia, 
namely,  the  notion  merely  of  a  rule  or  order  which  is 
discovered  to  hold  good,  as  far  as  observation  has  ex- 
tended, concerning  the  visible  succession  or  combination 
of  phenomena;  which  rule,  order  or  so-called  law  is  then 
often  by  unscientific  interpreters  termed  at  once,  without 
further  discussion,  an  "  ultimate  fact,"  and  is  hypostatized 
and  treated  in  discussion  as  if  it  were  a  sort  of  independ- 
ent entity,  a  little  God,  as  arbitrary  and  stubborn  as  fate, 
and  forcing  the  "events"  (still  other  hypostatized  ab- 
stractions), which  occur  in  accordance  with  it,  to  be 
what  they  are  and  to  occur  as  and  when  they  do  with 
inexorable,  but  otherwise  absolutely  inexplicable,  unin- 
telligible necessity.  Neither  laws  of  nature,  nor  any 
other  laws,  are,  rightly  regarded,  laws  of  happening; 
but  of  doing,  of  operation,  of  action  for  which  there  is 
a  reason.  Whatever  is  done  in  accordance  with  and  in 
consequence  of  them  is  done  because  reason  directs  it,  and 
reason  directs  it  because  it  is  good.  "  A  law  is  a  direct- 
ive rule  to  goodness  of  operation."  Is,  then,  nature  a 
reasonable  being  to  whom  laws,  "  rules  of  operation," 
considered  as  prescriptions  of  reason,  can  be  addressed, 
and  that  with  the  expectation  that  she  will  fulfill  the 
moral  obligation  which  they  iniply  to  act  according  to 
them?  No,  the  laws  which  we  may  figuratively  conceive 
and  describe  as  addressed  to  nature,  are  the  laws  wliich 
divine  reason  prescribes  to  the  operation  of  divine  power. 


ENGLISHMEN   OF  THE   RENAISSANCE.  77 

Nature  is  no  entity  with  power  to  understand  or  to  do. 
The  works  of  nature  are  God's  works.  "  Those  things," 
dechires  Hooker,  "  whicli  nature  is  said  to  do,  are  by 
divine  art  performed,  using  nature  as  an  instrument." 
Nature  the  "instrument"  of  divine  reason:  this  is  the 
language  of  philosophic  Idealism  in  all  ages,  and  of  the 
religious  Idealism  which  flows  fron*  the  very  nature  of 
man  the  world  over,  with,  at  most,  only  a  difterence  in 
what  may  be  termed  the  intellectual  scenery  of  the  con- 
ception. (Compare,  for  example,  Plato  and  Hooker  to- 
gether on  this  point.)  The  invariability  of  natural  law 
(it  were  better  to  say,  of  nature's  visible  or  apparent 
obedience  to  law)  follows,  with  Hooker,  from  the  immu- 
tability of  the  perfect  reason  of  divinity ;  but  has  also 
its  particular,  intrinsic  reason  in  the  necessity  of  such 
invariability  (of  "law,"  or  rather  of  obedience)  for  the 
subsistence  of  the  universe.  "  The  obedience  of  creatures 
unto  the  law  of  nature  is  the  stay  of  the  whole  world." 
Finally,  the  "  goodness  of  operation  "  of  nature's  laws  is 
attested  by  the  fact  which  Hooker  proclaims,  tbat  the 
works  of  nature  "  are  all  behoveful,  beautiful,  without 
superfluity  or  defect." 

It  is  not  necessary,  however  interesting  and  inspiring 
it  might  be,  to  follow  Hooker  through  the  whole  course 
of  his  development  of  this  grand,  because  genuine  and 
reasonable,  conception  of  law,  m  its  application  to  the 
inner  workings  and  relations  of  the  divine  nature,  the 
superior  knowledge  and  willing  obedience  of  angels  and 
archangels  and  of  saints  in  glory,  and  to  the  case  of  men 
on  earth,  for  whom  knowledge  is  attainable  only  through 
a  mental  travail,  which  is  painful,  and  hence  repulsive,  to 
the  natural  man,  and  whose  obedience,  even  when  kuowl- 


78  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

edge  is  not  wanting,  is  rarely  without  let  or  hindrance. 
Only,  as  regards  those  mysteries  of  the  divine  nature  con- 
cerning which  our  silence  is  our  best  eloquence,  Hooker 
is  convinced  that  they  are  mysteries  only  for  man's  lim- 
ited reason,  but  not  for  absolute  or  perfect  reason.  And 
as  regards  the  laws  which  are  to  govern  man,  laws  of 
nature  and  morality,  of  religion  and  (when  conformed  to 
its  true  intention)  the  state,  none  of  them,  either,  are 
arbitrary.  They  are  an  expression  of  reason,  and  are  to 
be  rationally  appreliended  and  justified.  The  general  law 
of  man's  being  is  determined  by  that  which  is  for  man  his 
peculiar  good  or  perfection.  And  this  consists  in  nothing 
less  than  a  certain  present  realization  of  the  divine  within 
the  limits  of  the  human.  It  is  perfect  union  with  God 
and  enjoyment  of  him,  so  that  "by  being  unto  God 
united,  we  live,  as  it  were,  the  life  of  God."  This  is  our 
"felicity  and  bliss,"  but  is  not  absolutely  attainable  in 
this  life.  "Under  man,"  says  Hooker,  "no  creature  in 
the  world  is  capable  of  felicity  and  bliss.  First,  because 
their  chiefest  perfection  consisteth  in  that  which  is  best 
for  them,  but  not  in  that  which  is  simply  best,  as  ours 
doth.  Secondly,  because  whatsoever  external  perfection 
they  tend  unto,  it  is  not  better  than  themselves  [namely, 
divine],  as  ours  is." 

In  conclusion,  I  cannot  refrain  from  rehearsing  the 
paragraph,  oft-cited,  but  never  sufficiently  to  be  admired, 
with  which  Hooker  splendidly  sums  up  and  concludes 
the  argument  of  his  first  book: 

"Wherefore,  that  here  we  may  briefly  end:  of  Law  there  can 
be  no  less  acknowledged,  than  tliat  her  seat  is  the  bofiom  of  (ilod, 
her  voice  the  harmony  of  the  world;  all  things  in  heaven  and  earth 
do  her  homage,  the  very  least  as  feeling  her  care,  and  the  greatest 


ENGLISHMEN   OF  THE   RENAISSANCE.  79 

as  not  exempted  from  her  power;  both  angels  and  men,  and  crea- 
tures of  what  condition  soever,  though  each  in  different  sort  and 
manner,  yet  all  with  uniform  consent,  admiring  her  as  the  mother 
of  their  peace  and  joy." 

This  is  a  specimen  of  the  best  idealism,  not  only  of 
the  English,  but  of  the  universal  human  mind ;  and  the 
First  Part  of  Hooker's  work  is  enough  of  itself  to  dis- 
prove any  pretense  that  in  the  English  mind  there  is  no 
capacity  for  true  philosophical  speculatio7i  {=vision). 


CHAPTER  IV. 

WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

Shakespeare,  of  name  undying! 
Thy  fleshly  heart,  low  lying, 
Responsive  beats  no  more, 
As  in  the  days  of  yore, 
To  vexed  humanity's  deep  sighing. 

But,  in  thy  living  pages, 
'Twill  need  no  keen-eyed  sages 
Forever  to  descry 
Such  life-blood  coursing  high, 
As  feeds  the  strength  of  all  the  ages. 

Once,  when  I  was  instructing,  with  a  German  text- 
book as  guide,  a  class  in  the  history  of  German  litera- 
ture, we  came  across  the  statement  that  a  certain  man, 
of  great  note  in  his  time,  held  at  one  of  the  German 
Universities  a  professorship  of  "philosophy  and  poetry." 
The  combination  of  subjects  was  sufficiently  uncommon 
to  be  striking,  and  I  asked  one  of  my  most  thoughtful 
pupils  the  question,  whether  in  his  view  such  a  combina- 
tion was  not  incongruous;  is  there  anything  in  common 
between  philosophy  and  poetry,  so  that  these  two  may 
legitimately  be  brought  together  as  constituting  one 
homogeneous  topic  of  study  and  contemplation  ?  The 
answer  which  I  received  was  the  same  which,  I  doubt 
not,  would  be  given,  at  first  thought,  and  without  deeper 
reflection,  by  ninety-nine  out  of  any  hundred  persons, 
who  have  no  ideas  concerning  philosophy  and   poetry, 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE.  81 

except  such  as  are  unconsciously  imbibed  from  the  com- 
mon atmosphere  of  opinion  which  surrounds  us  all.  To 
mention  philosophy  and  poetry  in  the  same  breath  was 
regarded  as  a  ludicrous  anomaly. 

And  indeed  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  a  contrast 
more  absolute  than  that  which  exists  between  the  too 
prevalent  manner  of  what  is  termed  philosophy  and  the 
characteristic  manner  and  spirit  of  poetry.  The  one 
dryly  argumentative  and  expository,  often  appalling  by 
its  technicalities  of  terminology,  and  too  often,  though 
illegitimately,  confined  to  the  analysis  and  labored  diges- 
tion of  dry  bones  or  husks,  from  which  life  has  long 
since  fled;  the  other,  instinct  with  the  warmest  human 
vitality,  the  passion,  the  hope,  the  despair,  the  love,  the 
hate,  the  aspiration,  the  vision  of  the  human  heart.  But 
what  if  the  subject,  the  method,  the  end  of  philosophy 
were  too  generally  misconceived,  not  only  by  laymen  in 
learning,  but  also  by  a  large  number  of  those  whom  we 
are  accustomed  to  honor  with  the  name  of  philosophers? 

Need  I  remind  the  reader  that  there  are  two  things 
which,  although  absolutely  distinct,  and  even  contrasted, 
m  their  immediate  aim,  subject-matter,  point  of  view, 
and  method,  are  yet  so  closely  related  (being  indeed  cor- 
relates, complementary  subdivisions  of  the  whole  of  hu- 
man knowledge)  that  they  have,  to  the  greatest  extent, 
in  the  history  of  human  thought,  been  confounded  with 
each  other?  I  refer  to  physics  and  metaphysics,  or  to 
physical  science  (with  all  its  subdivisions,  exact  and  de- 
scriptive, or  both  combined)  and  philosophy  —  the  former 
having  to  do  with  sensibly  verifiable  ijlienomena,  their 
classification,  their  mechanical  explanation,  and  their 
perfect   expression   in   mathematical   formula3,   and    the 


82  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKEllS. 

latter  with  rationally  apprehensible  realities,  with  the 
living  causes  of  phenomena  and  their  rational  explana- 
tion; the  one  dealing  with  apparent  form,  the  other  with 
vital  substance,  the  one  with  sensible  fact,  the  other  with 
rational,  ideal,  spiritual  truth,  the  one  content  simply  to 
take  the  measure  of  the  sensibly  actual,  however  imper- 
fect, the  other  testing  all  by  the  standard  of  the  ideally 
perfect  and  so  prescribing  to  the  imperfect  the  law  of  its 
progress  to  perfection;  and,  finally,  the  one  —  Science  — 
tending  to  the  present  material  utilities  and,  in  certain 
branches,  humanities  of  life,  the  other  to  that  still  higher, 
sacred  utility,  the  present  and  eternal  development  and 
conservation  of  humanity  itself — the  actual  realization 
of  the  ideal  Man,  in  feeling  and  in  reason.  These  two, 
I  say,  philosophy  and  physical  science  (in  which  I  in- 
clude constantly  mathematics,  the  special  organon  and 
methodological  ideal  of  physical  science),  are  comple- 
mentary to  each  other,  having  each  its  peculiar  prov- 
ince and  inner  justification,  and  yet  so  organically  re- 
lated that  each  leads  to,  implies,  demands  the  other. 
But  the  time  has  never  yet  been  when  the  distinction, 
or  at  least  the  true  relation,  between  the  two  was  clearly 
and  universally  perceived  and  respected.  In  ancient 
times  the  philosophical  problem  was  first  approached, 
and  rightly,  for  reasons  involved  in  the  nature  of  the 
case,  and  especially  of  man,  who,  considered  in  his  vital 
relations,  constitutes  the  first  and  most  absorbing  and 
indeed  (if  you  consider  all  that  is  involved  in  the  true 
knowledge  of  man)  the  whole  theme  of  philosophy. 
And,  by  the  way,  the  utter  short-sightedness  of  the 
Baconian  complaint  concerning  the  alleged  barrenness 
of  ancient  philosophy  —  its  failure  to  bring  forth  "fruits" 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  83 

—  is  at  once  apparent  when  one  considers  its  inestimable 
iniluence  in  giving  to  life  and  civilization  —  either  di- 
rectly or  indirectly  (in  the  latter  case  as  the  hand-maid 
of  religion)  —  whatever  of  ideal  perfection  these  have  pos- 
sessed down  to  the  present  day.  Is  a  noble  life,  the  in- 
spiration of  ideal  insight,  the  moulding  of  the  world's 
moral  and  artistic  life  {i.e.  its  greatest  values)  no  fruit? 
Bacon  needed  but  to  reflect  upon  the  moral  sources  of 
the  literary  power  of  the  Elizabethan  era,  of  which  he 
was  an  ornament,  to  perceive  that  that  wonderful  epoch 
in  the  higher  life  of  England  was  but  part  and  parcel  of 
a  Renaissance  and  new  life  of  the  best  spirit  of  ancient 
speculative  thought. 

However,  not  to  insist  now  at  greater  length  on  this 
point,  it  is  unquestionable  that  while  concrete  physical 
science  was  by  no  means  unknown,  in  substance  and  in 
the  elements  of  its  method,  to  the  ancients,  yet  its  culti- 
vation remained  far  behind  that  of  philosophy  proper,  and 
it  was,  and  continued  for  centuries  to  be,  regarded  (what 
there  was  of  it)  as  an  integral  portion  or  a  loose  adjunct 
of  philosophy  and  designated  by  the  same  name.  The 
history  of  modern  thought  has  exhibited  precisely  the  con- 
trary state  of  things,  notably  in  England.  The  very  con- 
ception and  method  of  philosophy  have  been  borrowed 
from  physical  science  (termed  natural  philosophy ; — we 
shall  see  this  in  detail  in  the  following  chapters).  In  other 
words,  instead  of  science  being  swallowed  up  by  philos- 
ophy or,  to  use  the  hateful  cant  expression,  "  in  bondage 
to  philosophy,"  philosophy  has  been  held  mostly  fast  in 
the  fetters  of  the  presuppositions  and  methods  of  physical 
science,  from  which  she  has  not  yet  succeeded  in  com- 
pletely rescuing  herself. 


84  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

My  present  point  is  this :  Philosophy  is  a  positive  thing, 
as  positive  as  existence  itself.  But  it  is  not  a  mere  knowl- 
edge of  details  and  minute  relations.  Its  characteristic 
function  is  not  numbering  or  measuring.  It  is  not 
anatomy.  It  does  not,  if  true  to  itself  and  its  aim,  place 
the  objects  of  its  investigation  in  a  vacuum  of  abstraction 
fatal  to  life  (which  piiysical  science  really  does).  Its  prob- 
lems are  problems  of  life,  because  they  are  problems  of 
essential  being  and  of  active  power.  Its  problems  are  syn- 
thetic and  organic,  because  life  is  synthesis  and  organism. 
They  are  ideal  and  rational,  because,  first,  the  knowing 
mind,  the  living  reason,  of  man,  which  is  the  organ  of 
philosophy,  can  grasp  only  that  which  bears  the  marks  of 
reason  (everything  else  being  incommensurate  with  it 
and  absurd),  and,  secondly,  because  all  life  turns  out  for 
philosophy  to  be  what  it  was  anciently  defined,  namely, 
"  energy  of  intelligence,"  or,  in  the  language  of  religion 
and  poetry,  "  energy  of  love." 

Now,  philosophy  proper  being  theory  of  life,  in  the 
/  broadest  and  highest  sense  of  this  term,  I  affirm  that 
'  poetry  is  the  exposition  of  life,  whether  life  of  man  or  of 
nature.  On  the  side  of  their  insight  the  philosopher  and 
the  poet  are  brothers,  with  somewhat  of  the  ditference 
which  Plato  puts  between  them,  namely,  that  the  former  is 
explicitly  conscious  of  the  theoretic  sense  and  importof  the 
vision,  and  the  latter  not,  though  this  difference  is  only 
relative.  Both  bring  the  same  message,  for  both  report 
the  same  simplicities  of  being,  the  same  eternities  of 
truth  —  only,  the  one  in  forms  of  demonstration,  calcu- 
lated to  produce  a  reasoned  conviction  ;  the  other  in  forms 
of  living  fancy,  adapted  to  enliance  the  fascination  of  the 
message.     Let  no  one,  however,  suppose  that  the  creative 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  85 

power  of  the  poet  extends  over  the  philosophic  truth,  the 
real  and  essential  substance,  of  what  he  sings.  Over  this 
he  has  no  control.  As  to  this,  he  is  inspired  by  the  truth, 
the  substance,  itself,  which  is  uncreated  and  unchange- 
able ;  he  is  simply  its  organ,  or  instrument  (as  Pope  so 
finely  said  of  Shakespeare,  that  he  was  nature's  instru- 
ment; and  asSchiller saysof  all  real  poets:  "Die  Dichter 
sind  iiberall,  schon  ihrem  Begriffe  nach,  die  Bewahrer  der 
Natur") ;  he  is  a  seer  and  can  only  tell  what  he  sees.  i)f 
what  use  were  it  if  (to  suppose  the  absurd)  he  could  cre- 
ate new  truth,  new  essential  reality,  new  ideal  substance? 
His  creation  would  be  unintelligible  to  any  but  himself; 
nay,  he  himself  could  not  understand  it,  nor  could  any 
god. 

The  rather,  the  very  reason  why  the  poet  speaks  a 
universal  language,  intelligible  to  the  universal  heart  and 
mind  of  man,  is  that  he  reports  concerning  things  which 
are  genuine,  abiding,  eternal,  intrinsically  real,  and  which, 
therefore,  on  the  one  hand,  he  cannot  change,  and  on  the 
other  are  the  soil  in  which  human  nature  and  the  nature 
of  things  are  so  deeply,  however  unconsciously,  imbedded, 
that  once  mentioned  they  seem  to  us  as  though  we  ought 
always  to  have  known  them  —  supremely  "natural,"  as 
we  say,  a  kind  of  revelation  of  grand  simplicities  which 
virtually  we  had  always  known.  This  work  of  the  poet  is 
that  "  one  touch  of  nature,"  of  reality,  of  being,  which 
"  makes  the  whole  world  kin." 

Creative  the  poet  is  at  most  only  in  regard  to  the  form 
in  which  his  story  is  told.  I  conclude,  then,  that  the 
true  poet  is  the  agent  and  messenger  of  immortal  truth, 
of  eternal  reality,  of  God,  and  that  the  real  sense  of  his 
song  consists  precisely  in  this,  that  it  is  a  communication 


86  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

of  fascinating  glimpses  of  the  source  whence  inspiration 
is  derived ;  it  is  in  its  measure,  as  I  began  by  saying,  an 
exposition  of  living  truth,  or  of  truth  of  life. 

The  true,  grand  poet  has  in  him  then  the  substance  of 
the  true  philosopher,  only  that  he  sings,  freely,  uplifted 
and  borne  by  his  message,  not  held  down  by  it  as  by  a 
weight,  with  an  appearance  of  unconsciousness  or  irre- 
flection;  in  short,  as  Goethe  puts  it,  "as  the  bird  sings," 
while  the  philosopher  aims  at  systematic,  discursive  expo- 
sition, and  employs,  more  especially  (though  not  necessa- 
rily, as  witness,  above  all,  Plato),  the  dialect  of  unadorned, 
reflective  prose.  The  philosopher  observes  and  thinks, 
and  makes  exhibition  of  his  thought  as  such,  in  such 
reasoned  form  as  is  judged  best  adapted  to  force  assent  to 
its  theoretical  correctness.  The  real  poet  is  careless  of 
assent,  and  yet  sure  of  it,  for  his  words  are  but  as  the 
vibration  of  the  universal  nature  of  man  and  of  tilings, 
and  cannot  but  awaken  responsive  and  consentaneous 
vibrations  in  the  soul  of  every  hearer.  Of  such  an  one 
we  may  well  say  that,  knowing  and  portraying  the  secrets 
oi  Life,  he  has  furnished  the  data  and  tests  of  philosophy, 
even  though  he  were  no  theoretical  philosopher. 

I  would  fain  exhibit  now,  though  briefly,  William 
Shakespeare  as  a  poet  in  the  sense  just  explained.  For, 
within  the  limitations  fixed  by  the  definition  given  of  tlie 
poet's  nature  and  function,  I  see  in  him  the  supreme 
exponent  of  the  philosophic  thought  of  his  age  and 
nation;  indeed,  a  true  prophet  of  mankind  in  all  ages 
and  all  nations.  (Coleridge:  "Shakespeare  is  of  no  age.") 
His  work  is  a  vindication  of  the  possession  by  the  Eng- 
lish mind  of  the  faculty  of  truest  philosophical  insight, 
and  at  the  same  time  swells  with 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE.  87 

Such  life-blood  coursing  high, 
As  feeds  the  strength  of  all  the  ages. 

With  this  end  in  view,  and  bearing  in  mind  that 
what  we  are  searching  for  we  must,  from  the  nature 
of  the  case,  expect  often  to  find,  less  in  the  form  of  ex- 
plicit statement  than  of  obvious  and  necessary  implica- 
tion, we  may  naturally  and  properly  ask,  first,  whether  in 
the  world  of  Shakespeare's  thought  supreme  reality  is 
ascribed  to  that  which  the  senses  are  supposed  to  per> 
ceive,  or  to  that  which  the  rational  spirit  alone  appre- 
hends, and  whether  the  power  which  gives  laws  to  events 
and  shapes  their  issue  is  confusedly  conceived  as  blind 
and  irrational,  and  incapable  of  love  or  mercy  (a  "per- 
sistent," mechanical  "  force  "),  or  clearly  apprehended  as 
spiritual  and  holy;  and  secondly,  and  particularly  —  for 
Shakespeare  is  still  more  directly  the  poet  and  historian  of 
man  than  of  the  nature  of  things  —  in  what  he  finds  the 
specific  nature  of  man  —  of  perfect  manhood  —  to  consist, 
whether  in  fiesli  and  blood,  in  sense  and  mechanically 
acting,  and  hence  uncontrollable  passion,  or  in  the  living, 
spiritual  realization,  through  the  free  activity  of  a  reason- 
able will,  of  an  ideal  purpose.  And  let  me  beg  the  reader 
to  consider,  in  passing,  with  reference  to  this  latter  point, 
that  if  Shakespeare  is  what  the  whole  civilized  world 
admits,  and  his  unquestioned  power  over  the  heart  and 
mind  of  man  proves  him  to  be,  he,  if  any  mortal,  must 
have  known  what  man  is,  not  simply  in  his  imperfect 
actuality,  but  also  —  and  this  is  the  essential  thing — in 
his  proper  reality,  his  true  intent,  his  ideal  perfection. 
For  what  has  Shakespeare  written?  He  has  written  His- 
tories, Comedies,  Tragedies;  he  is  a,  dramatic  historian, 
comedian,  tragedian,  and  this  supereminently,  without  a 


88  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

rival,  as  "nature's  instrument,"  or  better,  like  all  true 
genius,  as  the  instrument  of  divinity.  But  of  what  is  he 
the  historian  ?  Not,  surely,  of  the  kings  and  wars  and  of 
the  life,  high  and  low,  of  the  English  people,  and  of  these 
alone.  The  statistical  element,  the  element  of  special 
historic  actuality,  is  certainly  not  wanting.  But  this  is 
the  least  important  part  in  Shakespeare's  historical  dramas. 
Shakespeare  is  more  than  an  English  historian;  he  is  the 
historian  of  the  modern  mind,  he  is  the  historian  of  man. 
More  strikingly  does  this  appear  true  when  we  include  in 
the  account  the  comedies  and  tragedies  of  Shakespeare. 
In  order  that  one  may  be,  as  nearly  as  possible,  the  ideal 
comedian,  the  tragedian  jyar  excellence,  what  must  one 
know,  if  not  man  ?  What  are  comedy  and  tragedy,  if  not 
the  representation  of  that  which  is  characteristically 
affecting  for  man  ?  To  what  may  they  be  better  likened 
than  to  chemical  tests,  skillfully  and  intelligently  chosen, 
which  excite  in  man  certain  reactions  that  exhibit,  in 
their  measure,  accurately  the  nature  of  man  ?  The  per- 
fect comic  and  tragic  author  must  therefore  know  what 
is  comical  and  tragical  for  mail.  For  this  purpose  he 
must  know  man's  true  nature,  and  his  work  will  be  in 
the  broadest  and  best  sense  the  history,  or  exhibition,  of 
man.  Such  knowledge  Shakespeare  certainly  possessed, 
and  accordingly  one  source,  and  indeed  the  great  and 
commanding  source,  of  the  power  and  fascination  of 
Shakespeare's  dramas  lies  in  the  fact  that  7na)i  finds  him- 
self in  them.  Shakespeare  "holds  the  mirror  up"  espe- 
cially to  man's  "nature,"  revealing  man  to  himself,  not 
merely  in  his  coarse,  unpleasing,  semi-irrational  actual- 
ity,—  for  this  neither  poet  nor  philosopher  is  needed; 
any  observant  scribbler  can  do  this, —  but  in  his  ideal 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE.  89 

reality,  his  possibility,  his  required  nature,  in  that  divine 
purpose,  in  proportion  only  as  he  realizes  which,  man  is 
himself,  or  possesses  character,  i.e.  true  human  substance. 
It  is  only  in  the  light,  or  by  comparison  with  the  stand- 
ard, of  this  perfect  image  that  man  measures  his  actual 
perfection,  or  recognizes  his  imperfection  or  distortion. 
It  is  by  this  standard  that  in  Shakespeare's  plays  his  own 
characters  are  obviously — however  unconsciously,  in  many 
cases — judged. 

I  return  now  to  the  queries  above  raised  concern- 
ing Shakespeare's  thought,  and  consider,  first,  his  con- 
ception of  nature. 

The  sum  of  concrete  existence  we  term  nature.  An- 
alytic, studious,  investigating  man,  theorizing  concerning 
it,  arrives,  according  to  his  moral  and  intellectual  point 
of  view,  at  various  conclusions  respecting  its  real  sub- 
stance and  the  order  of  its  functions.  The  one,  follow- 
ing the  suggestions  of  sense  and  reasoning  from  a  few 
incomplete  analogies,  sees  in  nature  only  a  machine 
stored  with  unintelligent  force,  which,  working  day  and 
night,  brings  forth  in  restless  activity  successive  forms 
and  specimens  of  living  creatures,  which  come  into  ex- 
istence only  to  be  directly  swallowed  up  again  in  the 
mills  of  this  blind  god.  Thought  and  feeling,  fancy, 
faith,  prayer,  hope,  love,  are  only  delusive,  accidental 
products  of  its  mechanical  energy, — glittering  bubbles, 
destined  to  prove  their  impotent  insubstantiality  by 
bursting!  Another,  strong  in  the  self-conscious  assur- 
ance of  the  reality  of  mind  {i.e.  individual  conscious- 
ness), and  aware  of  the  mutability  and  relativity  of 
sensible  perception,  leaps  (we  will  suppose)  to  the  con- 
clusion   that    the    latter    is    absolutely    deceptive,    that 


90  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

the  belief  in  externality,  a  world  of  real  space  in 
three  dimensions,  is  an  illusion,  and  that  time  is  noth- 
ing but  a  subjective  phenomenon.  Instead  of  treating 
time  and  space  as  dependent  functions  of  real,  universal 
mind,  and  thus  possessing  derivative  reality,  he  makes 
them  purely  illusory  "  ideas"  of  individual,  phenomenal 
mind,  and  ascribes  reality  only  to  a  ghostly  abstraction. 
Shakespeare's  vision  is  more  comprehensive  tiian  either 
of  these.  On  the  one  hand,  he  is  not  like  the  German 
poet  upon  whom  Schiller  passed  the  criticism,  that  what- 
ever he  treated  he  stripped  it  of  its  body,  leaving  it  pure 
spirit.  This  is  not  Shakespeare's  art.  The  world  of  his 
dramas  is  the  present  world  of  embodied  life  and  action, 
in  space  and  time,  and  not  a  timeless  and  spaceless 
world  of — from  man's  present  point  of  view  —  abstrac- 
tion. Nay,  the  very  substance  of  his  art  consists  in  this, 
that  to  the  "forms  of  things  [sensibly]  unknown  " — ideal 
values,  truths  of  character,  spiritual  realities  —  he  gives 
present  intelligibility  for  men  still  held  in  physical  na- 
ture's arms,  by  assigning  to  them  a  "  local  habitation 
and  a  name."  Such  localization  in  space,  and  such  nam- 
ing, are  the  language  in  which  he  enables  us  to  read  — 
more  than  "a  little"  —  in  the  "infinite  book  of  secrecy" 
of  the  nature  of  final  and  commanding  realities.  On  the 
other  hand,  Shakespeare  is  just  as  far  removed  from 
supposing  that  the  mere  sensible  identification  of  phe- 
nomena, and  of  their  order,  in  time  and  space,  and  the 
naming  of  them,  contains  the  whole  sum  of  interesting 
and  useful,  or  marks  the  outermost  limit  of  possible, 
knowledge. 

"  These  earthly  godfathers  of  heaven's  lights  [the  astronomers] 
That  give  a  name  to  every  fixed  star, 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  91 

Have  no  more  profit  of  their  shining  nights 

Than  those  that  walk,  and  wot  not  what  they  are; 

Too  much  to  know  is  to  know  naught  but  fame: 
And  every  godfather  can  give  a  name." 

L.  L.  Lost,  I,  1. 

Shakespeare  here  satirizes,  in  effect,  as  a  narrow  perver- 
sion of  the  real  nature  of  knowledge,  those  same  methods 
and  practical  assumptions  which  Goethe,  through  the 
mouth  of  Mephistopheles,  covers  with  irony  in  his  Faust 
tragedy:  the  method,  which  is  content  to  enumerate,  to 
determine  analytically  the  order  in  time  of  the  succes- 
sive states  of  action  which,  in  life  or  nature,  are  bound 
up  in  one  organic,  synthetic  act,  and  the  form  and 
mechanical  function  of  each  of  the  parts  of  a  dissected 
organism,  and  the  assumption  that  this  is  complete  and 
final  knowledge  of  ultimate  reality.  Nay — Bacon, 
Shakespeare's  renowned  contemporary,  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding  —  there  are  more  things  in  heaven  and 
earth  themselves  than  are  dreamt  of  in  such  physical 
"philosophy."  Space  and  time,  figure,  motion,  the  sen- 
sibly known,  although  the  form  in  which  nature  presents 
objects  to  us,  are  but  the  form,  and  not  the  life,  not  the 
substance.  Easily  may  they  deceive  us.  "  0  place,  0 
form ! "  cries  out  Angelo,  in  Measure  for  Measiire : 

"  How  often  dost  thou  with  thy  case,  thy  habit. 
Wrench  awe  from  fools  and  tie  the  wiser  souls 
To  thy  false  seeming  !" 

And  so  accurately,  and  in  such  manifold  figures,  has 
Shakespeare  described  the  various  "  paces  "  of  time  ("  Time 
travels  in  divers  paces  with  divers  persons  "),  and  so,  by 
implication,  its  relativity,  that  one  of  the  latest  interpret- 
ers of  Shakespeare's  thought  claims  him  as  a  forerunner 


92  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

of  Kant,  in  holding  that  time  is  only  a  subjective  form  of 
human  sensibility.*  Not  this,  I  imagine,  is  Shakespeare's 
thought,  but  that  time,  as  a  form  of  physical  existence, 
shares,  except  in  as  far  as  both  are  informed  with  the 
power  of  spirit,  in  the  impermanency  and  insubstantiality 
of  such  existence.  The  fundamental  reality  of  physical 
existence  is  not  sensibly  discerned — in  this  negative  con- 
viction Shakespeare's  compatriots  of  to-day,  the  "  experi- 
ential"  and  physical  (or  "scientific")  philosophers  of 
England,  agree  with  him  unanimously,  but  here,  too, 
their  agreement  witli  him  is  prone  to  stop; — the  material 
constitution  of  nature  is  but  a  matrix,  a  temporary  in- 
strument of  generation,  in  the  hands  of  an  ideal  life.  For 
it  the  same  thing  holds  true,  Avhich  Shakespeare,  in  the 
lines  I  shall  presently  quote,  plainly  teaches  concerning 
man.  Its  being  is  not  in  what  it  has,  its  material  body,  a 
mere  instrument,  or  integument,  but  in  what  it  does 
(according  to  the  energetic  axiom  of  Leibnitz,  '^Substance 
is  action"),  or  in  the  life  which  it  lives.  In  Love's  La- 
bour's Lost,  Biron,  the  merriest  and  most  clear-seeing 
courtier  of  them  all,  declares : 

"So  study  evermore  is  overshot; 
While  it  doth  study  to  have  what  it  would, 
It  doth  forget  to  do  the  thing  it  should; 
And  when  it  hath  the  thing  it  hunteth  most, 
'Tis  won,  as  towns,  with  fire;  so  won,  so  lost." 

This  mistake,  nature  of   her  own  accord  never  makes. 

♦  Junt  as  strong,  but  also,  it  mu!»t  be  said,  just  as  unconvincing,  an  argument 
could  be  drawn  from  Sliakcspcarc".-  imagery,  to  prove  tliat  lie  lield  space  to  be 
nothing  but  a  sulijeetive  form  of  Iniman  sensibility.  Compare  tlie  intensely 
forcil>le  ejaculation  of  tlie  enamored  Antony,  in  Cleopatra's  |)alace:  "  Here  is 
my  space!"  and  Hamlet's  "O  God!  I  could  be  bounded  in  a  nutshell,  and 
count  myself  a  king  of  inUuitc  space,  were  it  not  that  I  have  bad  dreams." 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  93 

Were  she  for  a  moment  to  "forget  to  do,"  and  only 
"  study  to  have,"  her  fate  were  sealed  at  once ;  and  this, 
one  day,  will  be  her  fate,  when  exhausted  with  doing,  all 
her  most  brilliant  and  seemingly-solid  having  shall  fade 
into  nothingness.  "All  is  mortal  in  nature."  And  Glouces- 
ter, soliloquizing  over  the  wrecked  mind  of  King  Lear, 
bursts  forth, 

0  ruin'd  piece  of  nature!    This  great  world 
Shall  so  wear  out  to  nought." 

And  Prospero,  whose  command  of  nature  was  most  com- 
plete, in  well-known  lines: — 

"The  cloud-capp'd  towers,  the  gorgeous  palaces, 
The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself. 
Yea,  all  which  it  inherit,  shall  dissolve 
And,  like  this  insubstantial  pageant  faded. 
Leave  not  a  rack  behind."* 

Plainly,  that  which  to  the  eye  of  the  greatest  poet's 
discernment  is  from  everlasting  to  everlasting  is  not 
matter,  and,  consequently,  not  blind  force. 

Of  what  character,  now,  is  this  life  which  nature 
leads  ?  In  what  forms  is  it  apprehended  by  us,  and  what 
is  its  source  ? 

What  is  Life?  Every  age  has  its  circle  which  it  seeks 
to  square,  its  problem,  absurd  in  the  terms  in  which  it  is 
stated,  that  it  seeks  to  solve.  Perhaps  in  our  day  no 
more  striking  illustration  of  this  truth  is  furnished  than 
in  the  attempts  to   comprehend   the  nature  of    life  by 

*Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  (First  Principles,  p.  173)  finds  in  this  passage  evi- 
dence, not  of  poetic  nor  of  pliilosophic  insight,  but,  ratlier,  of  an  unfortnnate 
ignorance,  on  the  poet's  part,  of  the  scientific  law  of  the  indestructibility  of 
matter!  I  know  not  whether  Shakespeare's  muse,  if  appealed  to,  would  confess 
herself  more  grieved  or  amused  at  this  criticism. 


94  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

physical  analysis  or  chemical  composition.  A  Don  Quix- 
ote of  science,  selecting  inferior  organisms,  in  which  life 
is  at  its  lowest  ebb  —  slumbering,  so  to  speak  —  and 
armed  with  microscope  and  retort,  glass  jars  and  balances, 
goes  to  work  to  pull  apart  the  animate  mechanism,  to 
number  and  classify  and  name  its  molecules,  to  ascertain 
all  the  facts  of  organic  structure,  and  all  the  visible  con- 
ditions of  life,  with  a  view  to  creating,  subsequently,  by 
artificial  means,  a  similar  structure,  supplying  all  these 
conditions,  and  seeing  life  appear.  The  experiment  meets 
thus  far  with  indifferent  success,  it  is  true,  but  the  exper- 
imenters have  an  audacious  faith  in  final  victory.  And 
indeed  there  is  a  sense  —  the  only  one  to  which  genuine, 
intelligent  science  pays  attention  —  in  which  this  faith 
may,  for  aught  I  know,  be  well  founded.  It  may  indeed 
be  that  some  day  the  ingenuity  of  man  will  succeed  com- 
pletely in  bringing  together  all  the  conditions  without 
which  physical  life  does  not  exist,  and  that  this  success 
will  be  rewarded  by  the  vision  of  physical  and  chemical 
motions  apparently  passing  over  into,  or  having  added  to 
them,  vital  motions.  But  this  would  prove  nothing  con- 
cerning the  nature  of  the  power  by  which  that  change 
was  effectuated.  And  life  is  potcer,  not  merely  vital 
motion.  The  latter,  as  being  a  jihenomenon,  jjhysical 
science  may  and  must  observe  and  trace ;  the  former,  as 
being  the  cause  of  phenomena,  is  confessedly  beyond  the 
range  of  its  vision.  Further,  physical  life  is  conditioned 
power,  or  power  exerting  itself  instrumcntally.  This  is 
the  utmost,  speaking  summarily,  that  the  laboratory  can 
teach  us  respecting  the  philosophy  of  the  question,  and 
this  is  virtually  nothing;  for  who  did  not  know  it,  who 
denied  it,  beforehand?   Shakespeare  knew  it,  and  also  that 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  95 

it  was  utterly  irrelevant  as  an  answer  to  the  question  as 
to  —  not  how  but  what  life  is.  "Thou  art  not  thyself," 
says  the  Duke,  disguised  as  Friar,  who  would  prepare 
Claudio  for  death ;  i.e.  Thou,  as  a  being  physically  con- 
stituted of  flesh  and  blood,  a  mass  of  visible  protoplasm, 
art  not  thyself. 

"  For  thou  exist'st  in  many  a  thousand  grains 

That  issue  out  of  dust." 

Meas.for  Meas.,  Ill,  1. 

The  enumeration  of  these  grains  is  not  the  enumeration 
of  the  elements  of  thy  life,  nor  is  the  whole  sum  of  them 
the  sum  of  thy  life,  and  that  because,  among  other  things, 
life  is  not  divisible  into  physical  elements  of  any  kind ; 
it  is  not  anatomically  or  atomically  constituted;  it  is  an 
indivisible  and  invisible  power,  incapable,  as  such,  of 
mechanical  destruction  or  construction. 

After  the  worker  in  the  laboratory  comes  the  alleged 
philosopher  of  the  laboratory,  and  after  having  warned  us 
and  demonstrated  to  us  that  neither  he  nor  we  can  tell 
what  anything  really  is,  but  only  how  and  under  what 
laws  it  appears,  edifies  us  with  the  assurance  that  life  (as 
a  phenomenon)  is  "  the  definite  combination  of  hetero- 
geneous changes,  both  simultaneous  and  successive,  in 
correspondence  with  external  coexistences  and  sequences." 
We  accept  the  statement  in  tlie  spirit  in  which  it  is  offered, 
as  a  description,  more  or  less  lucid,  of  what  visibly  goes 
on  when  life  is  present,  and  note  the  alleged  "  correspond- 
ence "  or  harmonious  correlation  of  different  factors,  as 
indicating  that  life  is  a  power  behind  and  above  them  all, 
since  it  controls  all.  But  the  philosophical  question  is, 
not  what  is  life  as  a  phenomenon,  but  what  is  it  as  nou- 
menon,  a  "  thing-in-itself,"  what  is  it  in  its  essential  reality? 


96  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

To  this  question  no  one  but  the  genuine  poet,  or  the 
real  philosopher  with  true  poetic  insight,  can  give  an 
answer.  The  former  necessarily  sees,  and  those  who 
rightly  hear  him  singing  cannot  but  perceive  that  he  sees, 
and  how  he  sees,  what  and  where  life  is ;  and  this,  even 
though  he  make  no  attempt  expressly  to  tell  it.  The 
philosopher  sees,  and  expressly  labors  to  report  and  per- 
suade of  the  truth  and  genuineness  of  his  vision.  And 
the  answer  which  they  both  unite  in  giving  concerning 
the  nature  of  life  contains  the  key  to  all  philosophy  of 
being.  For  life  is  being,  which  latter  is  not  inert  impene- 
trability (as  of  material  atoms),  but  the  activity  of  self- 
exerting,  self-evidencing,  self-directing  power;  or  rather 
it  is  such  power  (a  synonym  for  life)  itself.  But  "self- 
directing  power,"  what  is  it  but  another  expression  for 
spirit,  of  which  reason  (intellectual,  moral,  and  aesthetic) 
is  the  guide,  and  will  the  motive  force?  This,  then,  is 
what  the  poet  and  philosopher  agree  in  saying,  namely, 
that  as  all  activity  betokens  power,  so  all  power  betokens, 
and  is  (though,  it  is  true,  in  different  grades),  the  direct 
function  of  mind.  And  so,  then,  life,  which  is  power,  is 
energy  of  mind.  Since  now  all  power  is  referred  to  mind 
—  and  to  what  else  should  it  be  referred?  —  physical  sci- 
ence confesses  that  it  knows  naught  of  power,  or  force,  as 
such,  but  only  of  phenomena  of  motion,  and  the  only 
rival  theory  to  the  one  just  announced  is  a  theory  which 
renounces  the  task  of  comprehending,  and  so  explaining, 
power,  and  simply  accepts  it  as  a  brute  fact,  endowed 
(as  is  supposed)  with  the  attributes  of  fate  and  mechanical 
necessity  —  since,  I  say,  all  power  is  referred  to  mind, 
and  since  all  energy  of  mind  is  life,  it  follows  that  all 
real  power  is  living  (real  "v/s  viva")^  and  that  the  con- 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  97 

notation  of  the  term  life  must  be  extended  so  as  to  make 
it  coextensive  with  the  whole  realm  of  existence ;  for  the 
realm  of  existence  extends  not  where  there  is  no  living 
power,  where,  to  repeat  our  previous  phraseology,  there 
is  no  doing.  Life,  then,  in  view  of  all  that  has  been  said, 
appears  as  the  omnipresent  demonstration,  in  the  midst 
of  the  phenomenally  actual,  of  the  commanding  reality 
of  the  ideal  —  i.e.  of  rational,  spontaneously  active,  ever 
directly  or  indirectly  creative  spirit,  as  that  to  which 
essential  being  alone  belongs,  and  of  which  alone  the 
"ideal"  is  the  product  and  vital  function. 

Our  concern  here  is  immediately  with  the  universal 
life  of  nature,  and  not  with  the  conscious  personal  life  of 
the  human  spirit,  that  form  of  finite  existence  in  which 
flife  rises  nearest  in  resemblance  to  God,  its  perfect  ex- 
(emplar  and  giver.     We  set  out  to  inquire  in  what  forms 
the  life, which  Shakespeare  recognizes  as  the  essential  and/ 
constitutive  thing  in  nature,  manifests  itself  and  is  known  \ 
to  us.     Shakespeare's  answers  are  in  accordance  with  the 
requirements  of  the  foregoing  analysis.     If  life  is  a  func- 
tion of  rational  spirit,  it  can  appear  and  be  known  only 
in  forms  of  intelligible  order,  and  in  services  of  goodness  / 
and  beauty,  such  as  reason  can  alone  understand,  propose, 
and  delight  in.     And  thus  it  is  in  Sliakespeare's  world. 
So  completely  is  order  the  essence  and  mainstay  of  the  *■ 
universe  that  the  enraged  and  desperate  Northumberland 
(in  K.  11.  IV,  Pt.  II)    can  pronounce  no   more   frightful 
imprecation  than  "Let  order  die";  with  order,  reason's 
living  work,  all  cognizable  existence,  dies,  vanishes  into 
the   primaeval  "darkness,"  which    accordingly    the   poet 
leaves  to  "be  the  burier  of  the  dead."     Living  power  is 

gone :  created  light  gives  place  to  undefinable  darkness ; 
5 


98  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

the  created  "  something,"  the  round  world,  shrinks  into 
its  original  or  (sensibly  considered)  its  essential  nothing- 1 
ness.  Further  the  life  of  nature  manifests  itself  in  ser-^ 
vices  of  goodness  and  beauty.  Take,  in  illustration  of 
this  statement,  the  3d  sc.  in  Act  II  of  Romeo  and  Juliet. 
It  is  Friar  Lawrence  who  speaks,  and  it  is  related  that 
Shakespeare  himself  used  to  assume  upon  the  stage  this 
role,  as  one  with  which,  presumably  on  account  of  the 
sentiments  (concerning  nature  and  human  life)  uttered  in 
it  by  the  keen-visioned  and  broad-visioned  friar,  he  was 
in  peculiar  sympathy. 

"  The  grey-ey'd  morn  smiles  on  the  frowning  night, 
Check'ring  the  eastern  clouds  with  streaks  of  light; 
And  flecked  darkness  like  a  drunkard  reels 
From  forth  day's  path  and  Titan's  fiery  wheels. 
Now,  ere  the  sun  advance  his  burning  eye 
The  day  to  cheer,  and  night's  dank  dew  to  dry, 
I  must  up-fill  this  osier  cage  of  ours 
With  baleful  weeds  and  precious-juiced  flowers. 
The  earth,  that's  nature's  mother,  is  her  tomb; 
What  IS  her  burying  grave,  that  is  her  womb; 
And  from  her  womb  children  of  divers  kind 
We  sucking  on  her  natural  bosom  find: 
Many  for  many  virtues  excellent, 
None  but  for  some,  and  yet  all  diff'erent. 
0,  mickle  is  the  powerful  grace  that  lies 
In  herbs,  plants,  stones,  and  their  true  qualities: 
For  nought  so  vile  that  on  the  Earth  doth  live 
But  to  the  Earth  some  special  good  doth  give; 
Nor  aught  so  good,  but,  strain'd  from  that  fair  use, 
Revolts  from  true  birth,  stumbling  on  abuse: 
Virtue  itself  turns  vice,  being  misapplied, 
And  vice  sometime's  by  action  dignified. 
Within  the  infant  rind  of  this  weak  flower 
Poison  hath  residence,  and  med'cine  power: 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  99 

For  this,  being  smelt,  with  that  part  cheers  each  part; 

Being  tasted,  slays  all  senses  with  the  heart. 

Two  such  opposed  kings  encamp  them  still 

In  man  as  well  as  herbs,  grace  and  rude  will; 

And  where  the  worser  is  predominant. 

Full  soon  the  canker  death  eats  up  that  plant." 

It  is  not  without  reason  that  I  have  twice  employed, 
with  reference  to  nature  as  it  reappears  in  Shakespeare's 
thought,  the  expression,  "services  of  goodness  and  X 
beauty."  For  as  the  virtues  of  natural  objects  are  active 
powers,  directed  to  right  uses,  so  natural  beauty  is  the 
accompaniment  of  a  service  rendered  to  the  universal 
order,  or  to  man,  the  created  earthly  head  of  that  order. 
The  sun  is  "glorious,"  indeed,  but  only  as  it  "completes" 
its  "courses,"  only  as  it  is  a  shining  sun,  a  "blessed 
breeding  sun,"  an  "all-cheering  sun."  The  "smallest 
orb  that  thou  behold'st"  sings  "like  an  angel,"  yet  not 
in  idle  rest,  "  but  in  his  motion."  This  idea  is  strikingly 
developed  in  one  of  Shakespeare's  sonnets  (54) : 

"  0,  how  much  more  doth  beauty  beauteous  seem, 
By  that  sweet  ornament  which  truth  doth  give! 
The  rose  looks  fair,  but  fairer  we  it  deem 
For  that  sweet  odour  which  doth  in  it  live. 
The  canker-blooms  have  full  as  deep  a  dye 
As  the  perfumed  tincture  of  the  roses; 
Hang  on  such  thorns,  and  play  as  wantonly 
When  Summer's  breath  their  masked  buds  discloses; 
But,  for  their  virtue  only  is  their  shew, 
They  live  unwoo'd  and  unrespected  fade; 
Die  to  themselves.    Sweet  roses  do  not  so; 
Of  their  sweet  deaths  are  sweetest  odours  made." 

Natural  beauty  is  the  ministrant  and  fainter  type  of 
the  beauty  of  moral  beings  —  of  men,  more  immediately 


100  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

—  which  consists  precisely  in,  or  is  the  inseparable  and 
indispensable  garb  of  active  moral  perfection,  and  of 
which  Sliakespeare  sings,  "Virtue  is  beauty,"  "Beauty/^ 
lives  with  kindness,"  and  (of  Portia)  "She  is  fair  [i.e.  in 
the  'shew'  menlioned  above  in  the  sonnet],  and,  fairer 
than  that  word,  of  wondrous  virtues."  It  is  man  whomY- 
Sliakespeare  terms  "the  beauty  of  the  world!"  ' 

Shakespeare  is  far  enough  removed  from  that  senti- 
mentalism,  prevalent  in  later  times,  which  is  prone  to 
revel  in  descriptive  praises  of  "nature,"  as  of  an  immense 
pictorial  "  shew,"  which  spreads  itself  out  periodically  for 
the  idle  delectation  of  human  beholders — a  panorama 
whose  whole  significance  is  exhausted  in  the  impression 
which  it  produces  on  the  organs  of  human  sensation — a 
sort  of  article  de  luxe,  mysteriously,  or,  rather,  to  all  in- 
tents and  purposes,  accidentally,  just  because  incompre- 
hensibly, provided  for  lazy,  intellectual  sybarites  —  an 
object  to  be  "returned  to,"  after  a  period  of  unnatural 
estrangement,  with  forced  and  hence  sickly  "love,"  or 
over  which  (to  apply  a  phrase  of  Goethe's) 

"  Sich  staunend  zu  ergotzen  " 

(translated  freely:  "to  revel  in  the  luxury  of  astonish- 
ment"). It  is  this  mental  —  or  sentimental — attitude 
with  reference  to  nature,  the  prevalence  of  which  in 
modern  poetry  Schiller,  in  a  well-known  essay,  deplored 
and  contrasted  with  the  healthier  simplicity  of  Homer 
and  Shakespeare,  whose  power  and  real  insight  lay  in  the 
fact  that  their  feeling  was  natural,  while  ours  is  an  arti- 
ficial plant,  a  hot-house  growth  of  professed  "love"  and 
often  all  but  deifying  "  admiration  " /or  nature.  ("  Sie 
empfanden  natilrlich',  wir  emj)finden  das  Natiirlicke.") 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  101 

For  Shakespeare,  as  for  Homer,  nature  is  not  the  object 
of  supreme  interest,  whether  morally  or  aesthetically.  / 
But  whatever  interest  she  does  possess,  arises  from  the  j 
circumstance  that  the  uses  and  beauties  of  nature  fore-  ' 
shadow  and  are  auxiliary  to  the  excellences  and  beauties 
of  human  character.  And  this,  again,  they  do  and  are, 
because  they  are  the  manifestations  of  a  life  communi- 
cated in  common  to  nature  and  to  man,  her  crown, — 
though  in  lower  potency  to  tlie  former  than  to  the  latter. 
In  short,  they  are,  in  accordance  with  our  foregoing  defi- 
nition, revelations  —  direct  works  —  of  an  "energy  of 
mind."  The  life  of  nature  is  the  power  of  God.*^  And  it 
is  a  wonderful  touch  of  nature's  art  in  Shakespeare,  that, 
to  the  height  of  this  grand,  but  simple,  argument  —  (for, 
*  after  all,  it  is  only  the  argument  of  living  sight)  —  he 
represents,  in  a  passage  redolent  as  with  a  fresh  breeze  of 
healthy,  open-air  deliglit,  not  man,  but  a  being  belonging 
peculiarly  and  alone  to  "  nature,"  as  rising  : — 

"But  what  a  point,  my  lord,  your  falcon  made, 
And  what  a  pitch  she  flew  above  the  rest, 
To  see  how  God  in  all  his  creatures  ivorksl 
Yea,  man  and  birds  are  fain  of  climbinj^  high." 

2  K.  H.  VI,  11,  1. 

Nature  lives,  but  not  through  herself  She  lives  in  God, 
through  the  power  of  divine  spirit.  Her  rational  and 
X  fixed  order,  her  virtues,  her  beauties,  all  bespeak  the  im- 
mediate energy  of  mind.  Hence  that  which  is  "  a  fault 
to  nature"  is  also  "to  reason  [the  function  of  mind]  most 
absurd." 

The  remaining  portion  of  our  present  theme  —  respect- 
ing Sluikespeare's  conception  of  essential  or  perfect  man-   >\ 
hood — is  nearly  as  inexhaustible  as  his  works  themselves. 


102  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

I  can  now  only  recall  hastily  some  of  the  leading  elements 
in  that  conception,  and  seek  to  emphasize  a  point  or  two 
of  capital  importance,  to  which  Shakespeare  himself,  by 
the  striking  emphasis  of  his  language,  directs  the  atten- 
tion even  of  the  unwilling. 

Note,  then,  that  in  the  world  of  Shakespeare  there  is 
no  question  whether  man  is  simply  a  physical  phenome- 
non or  a  spiritual  reality,  whether  his  mind  is  origi- 
nally a  tabula  rasa,  and  subsequently  a  mechanical  growth, 
or  a  living  power,  possessing  a  nature  and  faculties  of 
its  own,  nor,  consequently,  whether  he  is  in  his  action 
automatic  or  free.  By  as  much  as  man  is  man,  Shakes- 
peare perceives  that  the  second,  in  each  of  these  pairs 
of  alternatives,  is  true  of  him.  But  Shakespeare  also 
perceives  that  the  actual  man  may  only  be  half  a  man, 
and  almost  no  man  at  all;  and,  in  general,  that  man- 
hood is  a  problem,  which  every  one  is  called  upon,  on 
pain,  if  he  neglect  this,  of  being  less  than  man,  to  solve; 
a  work,  in  which  all  men,  with  more  or  less  of  intelligence 
and  success,  are  engaged,  or  else  are  fatally  neglecting;  an 
ideal,  the  free  and  willing  realization  of  which  marks  the 
true  man.  Nor  is  he,  also,  unmindful  of  the  circumstance 
that  although  essential  manhood  is  an  ideal  value,  a 
spiritual  life,  yet  the  means  of  its  present  manifestation, 
nay,  more,  of  its  present  realization,  is  the  "natural 
man,"  as  existing  in  and  determined  by  flesh  and  blood, 
with  his  manifold  peculiarities  of  temperament,  and  ad- 
vantages or  disadvantages  of  milieu  or  environment,  the 
whole  constituting  a  mechanism  which  at  once  serves  as 
a  check  or  foil,  but  also  as  an  instrumental  lever  and 
fulcrum,  to  the  spiritual  man.  And  so  accurate  is  Shakes- 
peare's knowledge  of  the  phenomenology  of  the  natural 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  103 

or  (in  modern  phrase)  physiologico-psychological  man, 
that  in  this  respect,  too,  the  full  truth,  as  it  regards 
Shakespeare,  of-SHerder's  belief  is  sustained,  that  "  Homer 
and  Sophocles,  Dante  and  Shakespeare  have  furnished 
more  material  for  psychology  and  the  knowledge  of  man 
than  even  the  Aristotles  and  Leibnitzes  of  all  nations  and 
times."  No  one  is  better  acquainted  than  Shakespeare  ! 
with  the  degree  to  which  the  heart —  ; 

"Corrupt,  corrupt,  and  tainted  in  desire" —  I 

and  not  only  that,  but  the  "pale  cast  of"  intellectual 
"thought,"  blinds  the  eye  to  the  true  self,  and  sicklies 
o'er  the  native  hue  of  the  spirit's  resolution.     None  know 
better  than  he  to  what  degree  "nature  must  obey  neces-   1 
sity."    Yet  this  knowledge  does  not  mislead  him  for  an 
instant,  or  by  the  distance  of  a  hair's  breadth,  toward  the 
identification  of  manhood  with   automatism.     Imagine  "j     | 
for  an  instant  the  impossible,  and  suppose  the  men  and  ,     | 
women   of   Shakespeare's  dramas  to  be   mere  automata.  J    ; 
Can  a  more  profane  travesty  of  the  poet's  noble,  all- 
persuasive  thought  be  conceived?     Enter  the  portals  of 
his  splendid,  truthful  visions,  and  your  brow  is  cooled, 
your  spirit  invigorated  at  once  with  the  breath  of  a  free- 
dom, a  responsibility,  a  glad  and  sacred  possibility,  which 
)is  neither  the  slave  nor  the  enemy,  but  the  facile  and 
rightful  mistress  and  user  of  the  earthy.     The  "neces- 
sity" of  bent,  of  passion,  of  external  influence  is  only 
apparent.     It  is  a  sham.     It  is  a  lion  in  the  way  of  the 
moral  sluggard.     To   genuine  manhood  it  offers,  in  its 
various  forms,  steps  and  stimuli,  means  and  instruments. 

"Our  mere  defects"  may 
"Proveour  commodities." — Lear,  IV,  1. 


104  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

The  only  true  necessity,  as  Shakespeare  will  illustrate  for 
us,  is  that  which  a  reasonable  will,  not  submits  to,  but 
creates.  ♦ 

But  it  is  time  that  Shakespeare  himself  be  allowed 
to  express  himself  on  these  various  points.  I  am  aware 
how  delicate  a  matter  it  sometimes  is  to  select  from  the 
works  of  a  dramatic  author,  wliere  the  exigencies  of  the 
case  require  him  to  bring  before  his  public  persons  actu- 
ated by  and  giving  expression  to  all  varieties  of  sentiment, 
passages  in  which  the  author  is  to  be  considered  as  ex- 
pressing his  own  views.  Of  course  I  would  venture 
upon  nothing  of  the  kind  were  I  not  convinced  that  the 
citations  I  make  are  fairly  representative  of  the  main 
direction  of  the  poet's  own  thought  —  a  conviction  whicii 
must,  naturally,  depend  quite  as  much,  or  more,  on  a 
certain  comprehensive  and  sympathetic  perception  of  the 
elements  of  the  general  moral  atmosphere  which  per- 
vades Shakespeare's  dramatic  world,  as  on  the  analysis 
of  single  texts.  I  willingly  accept  the  responsibility  for 
my  own  judgments  in  the  present  case,  with  no  fear  of 
their  being  contradicted  either  by  the  general  consensus 
of  Shakespearean  criticism  or  by  the  common  opinion 
of  all  intelligent  lovers  of  Shakespeare. 

First,  then,  we  are  not  characteristically  ourselves 
when,  or  so  far  as,  our  lives  are  absorbed  in  sensual  func- 
tions: the  self  to  which  Shakespeare,  through  the  mouth 
of  Polonius,  bids  us  be  true  ("  to  thine  own  self  he  true"), 
is  an  ideal  i)ossibility  and  requirement,  a  spiritual  entity — 
for  it  is  endowed  with  reason  to  perceive,  and  will  to 
execute,  and  heart  to  love,  the  ideal  truth,  and  goodness, 
and  beauty. 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE,  105 

"What"  [says  Hamlet]  "is  man 
If  his  chief  good  and  market  of  his  time 
Be  but  to  sleep  and  feed?  a  beast,  no  more. 
Sure,  He  that  made  us  with  such  large  discourse, 
Looking  before  and  after,  gave  us  not 
That  capability  and  godlike  reason, 
To  fust  in  us  unus'd." 

The  perfect  (or,  in  Plato's  language,  which  Shakes- 
peare also  imitates,  kingly)  state  of  man  is  when  each 
*'  office  "  does 

"Distinctly  his  full  function." 

This  were  a  harmony  of  sense  and  reason,  which,  how- 
ever, in  view  of  the  unbridled  lusts  of  the  former,  is  not 
to  be  effectuated  but  by  the  use  of  reason  to  bridle  and 
control  sensuous  passion.  Hence,  the  excellent  advice 
which  Northumberland,  in  K.  H.  VIII,  I,  1,  gives  to 
Buckingham,  is  an  elementary  principle  of  ethics,  or  of 
practical  truth  to  self: 

"Ask  God  for  temp'i-ance." 

"  Let  your  reason  with  your  choler  question 
What  'tis  you  go  about.     To  climb  steep  hills 
Requires  slow  pace  at  first:   anger  is  like 
A  full-hot  horse,  who  being  allow'd  his  way, 
^     Self-mettle  tires  him.     Not  a  man  in  England 
Can  advise  me  like  you.     Be  to  yourself 
As  you  would  to  your  friend." 

Buckingham  has,  namely,  the  knowledge  and  the  faculty 
requisite  to  guide  and  control  himself  as  his  own  man- 
hood requires.     Again : 

"Be  advis'd: 
say  again,  there  is  no  English  soul 
More  stronger  to  direct  you  than  yourself, 


106  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

If  with  the  sap  of  reason  you  would  quench, 
Or  but  allay,  the  fire  of  passion." 

The  same  lesson  is  familiarly  known  to,  or  practiced  by, 
Prospero,  the  intellectual  hero  of  that  play  which,  in 
Prof.  Dowden's  language, "  expresses  Shakespeare's  highest 
and  serenest  view  of  life."    Says  Prospero : 

*'  Though  with  their  high  wrongs  1  am  struck  to  the  quick. 
Yet  with  my  nobler  reason  'gainst  my  fury 
Do  I  take  part:  the  rarer  action  is 
In  virtue  than  in  vengeance." 

Even  lago,  who  is  just  as  little  a  fool  as  he  is  a  consum- 
mate villain,  will  tell  us :  "  If  the  balance  of  our  lives 
had  not  one  scale  of  reason  to  poise  another  of  sensuality, 
the  blood  and  baseness  of  our  natures  would  conduct  us 
to  most  preposterous  conclusions;  but  we  have  reason 
to  cool  our  raging  motions,  our  carnal  stings,  our  un- 
bitted  lusts."  Aye,  "  to  most  preposterous  conclusions  " 
are  we  in  fact  conducted  when,  not  deprived  of,  but 
displacing,  the  "  scale  of  reason,"  and  neglecting  that 
moral  work  by  which  character  is  formed,  the  natural 
,  man  is  allowed  to  have  his  own  way  (a  too  common  error 
now-a-days,  not  only  in  self-discipline  —  by  reason  of  the 
common  absorption  in  the  chase  for  secondary  goods,  as 
place  and  wealth,  and  physical  comfort  —  but  al^o  in 
the  discipline  of  children,  who,  dear  creatures,  must  not 
have  their  wills,  i.e.  their  unreasoning  passions,  crossed, 
lest  they  lack  "spirit";  as  though  "spirit"  were  not  a 
deadly  thing,  without  the  kingly  power  to  rule  it!).  For 
then  are  we  not  simply  "  not  ourselves  " —  as  is  the  case 

"  When  nature,  being  oppressed,  commands  the  mind 
To  suiFer  with  the  body  " 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  107 

{i.e.  when,  through  natural  causes,  complete  functional 
derangement  supervenes)  —  but  worse.     For 

"Sometimes  we  are  devils  to  ourselves, 
When  we  will  tempt  the  frailty  of  our  powers," 

i.e.  of  our  lower  powers,  and  that  by  relaxing  our  hold 
upon  them.  Nay,  then  we  are  "merely  our  own  traitors. 
And  as  in  the  common  course  of  all  treasons,  we  still  see 
them  reveal  themselves,  till  they  attain  to  their  abhorred 
ends ;  so  he  that  in  this  action  contrives  against  his  own 
nobility,  in  his  proper  stream  o'erjiows  himself^  (All's 
Well  That  Ends  Well,  IV,  3.)     We  "pursue 

(Like  rats  that  ravin  down  their  proper  bane) 
A  thirsty  evil,  and  when  we  drink  we  die." 

Meas.  for  Meas.,  I,  3. 

Now  that  in  such  a  course  of  active  personal  degradation, 
when  we 

"In  our  own  filth  drop  our  clear  judgments,"  and  "strut 
To  our  confusion," 

there  is  much  that  is  automatic,  is  perfectly  known  to 
Shakespeare,  as  to  every  thoughtful  man.  But  precisely 
therein  lies,  not  the  excuse,  but  the  disgrace  and  the  con- 
demnation of  him  who  thus  errs.  The  lower  nature  of 
man  is  precisely  an  automatic  mechanism,  and  uncon- 
trolled it  moves  at  last  with  a  power  practically  irresist- 
ible. 

"What  rein  can  hold  licentious  wickedness, 
When  down  the  hill  he  holds  his  fierce  career?" 

cries  out  Shakespeare's  favorite  hero.  King  Henry  V.  But 
also,  precisely  in  the  circumstance  of  our  allowing  the 
automatic  mechanism  to  run  without  restraint  consist^ 


108  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

the  very  treason  to  ourselves  above  noted.  We  abdicate 
our  own  manhood  by  submitting  to  be  controlled  by,  and 
practically  absorbed  in,  a  mechanism  which  (unhappily) 
will  move  on,  with  ever-increasing  and  dangerous  speed, 
without  waiting  for  any  direct  impulses  on  our  part.  We 
are  not  true  to  our  real  selves;  wc  consent,  as  much  as  in 
us  lies,  not  to  be  ourselves.  It  is  then  that  life  appears  — 
and  rightly  —  as  it  did  to  Macbeth,  when  by  crime  he  had 
divested  himself  of  his  proper  humanity,  as 

"A  walking  shadow 
...    a  tale 

Told  by  an  idiot,  full  [indeed]  of  sound  and  fury, 
[But]  signifying  nothing." 

But  our  condemnation  remains,  for  the  automatic  part  is 
originally  not  put  in  possession  of  us,  but  we  are  placed 
in  possession  of  it,  and  it  is  ours  to  maintain  and  confirm 
our  control  of  it.  It  is  of  no  avail  for  us  to  declare,  with 
reference  to  its  power  over  us  (with  Roderigo),  "it  is  not 
in  my  virtue  [power]  to  amend  it."  The  answer  is: 
"Virtue?  a  fig!  'tis  in  ourselves  that  we  are  tlius  or  thus. 
Our  bodies  are  gardens,  to  the  which  our  wills  are  garden- 
ers; so  that  if  we  will  plant  nettles,  or  sow  lettuce;  set 
hyssop,  and  weed  up  thyme;  supply  it  with  one  gender  of 
herbs,  or  distract  it  with  many;  either  to  have  it  steril 
with  idleness,  or  manur'd  with  industry;  wliy,  the  power 
and  corrigible  authority  of  this  lies  in  our  wills"  (Othel- 
lo, I,  3.)  If  we  sow  we  shall  reap,  and  tiie  crop  will  grow 
automatically;  but  it  is  for  us  to  determine  how  and 
what  we  will  sow.  This  is  our  responsibility,  but  also  our 
privilege.  (A  like  subterfuge  of  human  frailty  is  power- 
fully castigated  by  Edmund,  in  King  Lear,  I,  2:  "This  is 
the  excellent  foppery  of  the  world,  that  when  we  are  sick 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  109 

in  fortune  (often  the  surfeit  of  our  own  behavior),  we 
make  guilty  of  our  disasters  the  sun,  the  moon  and  the 
stars,  as  if  we  were  villains  by  necessity,  .  .  .  and  all  that 
we  are  evil  in  by  a  divine  thrusting  on.")  In  short, 
Shakespeare's  characters  are  endowed  with  free  will,  and  it 
is  preeminently  because  they  are  thus  endowed  that  all 
men  everywhere  recognize  themselves  in  them.  The  poet, 
reading  human  nature  with  his  divinely  given  insight, 
finds  there  what  philosophy  and  the  common  sense  of 
mankind  agree  in  finding,  freedom,  spontaneity,  and  true, 
and  in  its  measure  independent,  life,  undisturbed  by  the 
utterly  irrelevant  circumstance  (which  yet  seems  to  dis- 
turb so  many  excellent  people  now-a-days)  that  the  ana- 
lytic science  of  mental  plienomcna  (not  of  mental  life) 
discovers  nothing  of  the  sort.  And  further,  and  more 
particularly,  notice  that  Shakespeare  —  the  all-seeing,  we 
are  tempted  to  say  —  has  expressed,  with  wonderful  effect, 
in  one  line,  a  truth  Avhich  is  a  commonplace  for  all  pro- 
found and  consistent  philosophic  thought,  namely,  that 
for  will  —  which,  in  the  last  resort,  is  the  only  and  suffi- 
cient explanation  of  all  real  power  or  "force,"  and  hence, 
in  conjunction  with  reason,  its  inseparable  companion,  of 
all  things — there  is  no  necessity  whatever  but  such  as  itself 
creates ;  true  necessity  is  not  imposed,  it  is  made.  This, 
in  its  relation  to  man,  is  expressed  by  one  of  Shakespeare's 
characters  in  these  words : 

^  "Look,  what  I  will  not,  that  I  cannot  do!" 

Meas.  for  Meas.,  II,  2. 

Plainly  enough,  for  Shakespeare,  the  specific  nature  of 

man  consists  (in  the  phraseology  which  I  used  hypothet- 

.   ically  near  the  beginning  of  this  chapter)  in  the  living. 


110  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

spiritual  realization,  through  the  free  activity  of  a  reason- 
able will,  of  an  ideal  purpose.  At  the  same  time  Shakes- 
peare forgets  none  of  the  conditions  on  which  the  best 
activity  of  reason  and  will  depend,  or  means  by  which 
they  are  disciplined  and  made  effective.  Reason  must  be 
enlightened,  else  were  it  not  reason,  and  would  not  ac- 
complish its  due  function. 

"  Ignorance  is  the  curse  of  God, 
Knowledge  the  wing  wherewith  we  fly  to  heaven." 

2  K.  H.  VI,  IV,  7. 

Such  knowledge,  not  a  merely  passive  acquisition  of 
the  intellect  (not  mere  information),  but  a  main-spring 
of  action  to  the  will  which  it  illuminates,  is,  partly,  it  is 
true,  a  virtual  endowment,  but  partly,  also,  and  no  less 
essentially,  a  cultivable  growth. 

"Nature,  crescent,  does  not  grow  alone, 
In  thews  and  bulk,  but,  as  this  temple  waxes 
The  inward  service  of  the  mind  and  soitl 
Grows  wide  withal,"  Hamlet,  I,  3. 

It  does  not  all  accrue  from  sense-impressions.  It  in- 
volves self-knowledge,  through  solitary  communion  of 
the  soul  with  itself —  whence  its  language  is  (K.  Henry  V 
is  the  speaker)  : 

"  I  and  my  bosom  must  debate  awhile. 
And  then  I  would  no  other  company." 

The  will  of  man  itself  is  not  a  faculty  of  wonder-work- 
ing omnipotence,  but  works  through  means  which,  on  the 
one  hand,  limit  and  define  its  scope,  and,  on  the  other, 
are  its  own  creation.  The  enlightened  will  makes  habit 
and  uses  it  as  its  instrument. 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE.  Ill 

"  Refrain  to-night, 
And  that  shall  lend  a  kind  of  easiness 
To  the  next  abstinence:    the  next  more  easy; 
For  use  almost  can  change  the  stamp  of  nature, 
And  either  curb  the  devil,  or  throw  him  out 
With  wondrous  potency."  Hamlet,  III,  4. 

But  will,  enlightened,  must  act  promptly,  otherwise  it 
wastes  its  own  energy. 

"  That  we  would  do, 
We  should  do  when  we  would;  for  this  would  changes. 
And  hath  abatements,  and  delays  as  many, 
As  there  are  tongues,  are  hands,  are  instruments." 

Nor,  finally,  does  Shakespeare  forget  that  the  divine 
in  man  is  organically  related  to  the  supreme  divine. 
The  divine  purpose  in  man  is  indeed  self-realizing,  but 
only  through  the  ever-ready  help  of  God. 

"  Every  man  with  his  affects  is  born. 
Not  by  might  master'd  but  by  special  grace." 

L.  L.  Lost,  I,  1. 

Over  the  righteous  cause  of  the  individual  or  the  nation 
the  gegis  of  divine  protection  is  represented  as  constantly 
hovering.  The  faintest  endeavor,  if  sincere,  to  work 
righteousness,  God  not  simply  approves,  but  aids.  This 
sentiment  (in  general  terms)  shines  throughout  Shakes- 
peare's histories:  "Heaven  is  above  all  yet"  (K.  H.  VIII, 
111,1);  "Heaven  still  guards  the  right"  (K.  E.  II, 
III,  2)',  and  no  less  in  his  tragedies;  to  cite  further  illus- 
trations were  to  draw  from  a  well-nigh  inexhaustible 
mine. 

So,  then,  the  end  of  all  human  perfection  is  —  not 
"vanity"  —  but  the  undemonstrative  majesty  of  ideal 
character,  whose  "greatest  help"  —  and  strength  —  "is 


112  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

quiet"  (2  K.  H.  VI,  II,  4) ;  whose  "crown  is  called  con- 
tent" (3  K.  II.  VI,  III,  1),  to  which  not  seldom  "noth- 
ing" brings  "all  things"  (Timon  of  Ath.,  V,  2),  which 
knows  at  the  right  time  "the  blessedness  of  being  little" 
(K.II.VIII,  IV,  2);  and  yet,  made  "bold  and  resolute" 
through  the  consciousness  of  its  own  "innocence,"  can, 
in  the  defense  of  a  right  cause,  demonstrate  greatly  its 
own  imperial  power.  Concerning  which  let  us  conclude 
by  hearing  two  characters  whom  we  may  rightly  judge  to 
be  among  the  most  Shakespeareayi  of  all  those  who  people 
Shakespeare's  wonderful  transcript  of  the  moral  world. 
And  first,  Hamlet : 

"  Rightly  to  be  great, 
Is  not  to  stir  without  great  argument, 
But  yreatlij  to  find  quarrel  in  a  straw. 
When  honour's  at  the  stake."  IV,  4. 

And  K.  Henry  V,  of  whom  Shakespeare,  in  the  chorus- 
prologue  to  Act  IV,  cries, "  Praise  and  glory  on  his  head  " : 

"  In  peace  there's  nothing  so  becomes  a  man 
As  modest  stillness  and  humility; 

But  when  the  blast  of  war  blows  in  our  ears, 

******* 

Stiffen  the  sinews,  summon  up  the  blood, 

Then  lend  the  eye  a  terrible  aspect; 

Let  it  pry  through  the  portage  of  the  head, 

Like  the  brass  cannon;   let  the  brow  o'erwhelm  it 

As  fearfully  as  does  a  galled  rock 

O'erhang  and  jutty  his  confounded  base, 

Swill'd  with  the  wide  and  wasteful  ocean. 

*  #  *  *  «  «  « 

*  *  *  bend  up  every  spirit 

To  his  full  height.    On,  on,  you  noblest  English. 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE.  113 

*  *  *  The  game's  afoot: 

Follow  your  spirit  [not,  yield   to  an  automatic  impulse], 

and  upon  this  charge 
Cry,  'God  for  Harry,  England,  and  St,  George  ! '  " 

III,  1. 

But  this  discussion  must  end  here,  even  though  ab- 
ruptly. I  trust  I  have  done  something  to  show  that 
Shakespeare  the  poet  reads  life  —  in  the  broadest  accepta- 
tion of  the  term  —  as  the  universal  mind  of  man  reads 
it,  as  the  heart  feels  it,  as  philosophy  interprets  it.  Shakes- 
peare, as  a  true  poet,  supplies  philosophy  with  its  peculiar 
data  and  tests.  He  supplies  one  of  the  first  and  grandest 
proofs  of  the  native  endowment  of  the  English  mind 
with  the  first  and  grandest  prerequisite  of  genuine  phi- 
losophy ;  I  mean  with  the  power  of  living  —  which  is  spirit- 
ual—  insight. 
5* 


CHAPTER  V. 

FRANCIS  BACON. 

We  come  now  to  the  consideration  of  a  name  which 
Englishmen  at  large  have  been  wont  to  honor  as  one  of 
the  proudest  in  their  annals;  to  one  whom  they  are 
proud  to  regard  as  typical  of  all  that  most  entitles  their 
nation  to  the  intellectual  respect  and  substantial  grati- 
tude of  mankind.  Not,  however,  as  we  shall  see,  without 
variation  and  marked  exception  ;  and  it  will  be  our  en- 
deavor to  seek  to  indicate  in  general  what  estimate  is 
really  to  be  placed  upon  his  spirit  and  his  work. 

William  Rawley,  D.D.,  "  His  Lordship's  first  and  last 
Chaplain,"  begins  his  brief  "  Life  of  the  Honourable 
Author"  as  follows: 

"Francis  Bacon,  the  glory  of  his  age  and  nation,  the  adorner 
and  ornament  of  learning,  was  born  in  York  House,  or  York  Place, 
in  the  Strand,  on  the  two  and  twentieth  day  of  January,  in  the  year 
of  our  Lord  loGO  [old  style;  new  style,  1561].  His  father  was  that 
famous  counsellor  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  the  second  prop  of  the  king- 
dom in  his  time.  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon,  knight,  lord-keeper  of  the 
great  seal  of  England;  a  lord  of  known  prudence,  sufficiency,  mod- 
eration, and  integrity.  His  mother  was  Anne,  one  of  the  daughters 
of  Sir  Anthony  Cook,  unto  whom  the  erudition  of  King  P]dward  the 
Sixth  had  been  committed;  a  choice  lady,  and  eminent  for  piety, 
virtue,  and  learning;  being  exquisitely  skilled,  for  a  woman,  in  the 
Greek  and  Latin  tongues.  These  being  the  parents,  you  may  easily 
imagine  what  the  issue  was  like  to  be;  having  had  whatsoever 
nature  or  breeding  could  put  into  him." 

He,  into  whom  nature  and  breeding  had  really  put 

114 


FRANCIS  BACON.  115 

their  best  work,  might  well  consider  himself  made  for  the 
greatest  things :  a  view,  which,  as  we  shall  see.  Bacon  in- 
deed took  of  himself.  Note,  further,  particularly  that 
Bacon  was  born  into  the  atmosphere  of  courtly  station, 
and  that,  too,  when  life  in  such  station  must  rest  upon  a 
strong  and  solid  sense  of  generous  and  just  power.  For 
it  was  in  the  "golden  days  of  good  queen  Bess,"  from 
which,  in  the  words  of  Mr.  E.  A.  Freeman,  the  "com- 
pleted national  character  of  England  mainly  dates;"  a 
very  and  noble  "partus  temjjoris "  (to  apply  a  phrase  of 
Bacon's),  or  "  hirth  of  time,'''  when  convergent  lines  of  po- 
litical and  religious  life  met,  crystallized,  and  manifested 
themselves  in  demonstrations  of  conscious  political  and 
moral  energy  and  wholeness,  unparalleled  in  the  history 
of  England,  and  in  which  sovereign  and  nobility  partici- 
pated, not  as  idle  or  indiflFerent  spectators,  but,  very  es- 
sentially, as  true  leaders  of  the  people.  His  mother,  too, 
like  Spenser's  "  Gloriana,"  Queen  Bess,  was  "exquisitely 
skilled  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  tongues."  <That  Renais- 
sance love  of  letters  which  helped  to  kindle  that  other 
larger,  freer,  more  spontaneous  and  more  energetic  "  love 
of  the  soul,"  the  fire  of  genius,  whose  light  in  English 
literature  was  then  beginning  to  burn  more  intensely 
than  ever  before  or  since,  was,  then,  among  the  fires 
which  burned  on  Bacon's  domestic  hearth.  A  happy 
augury,  one  would  say,  indeed! 

However,  we  find  Bacon  —  with  whom  as  a  boy  Queen 
Elizabeth  is  said  to  have  "delighted  much  to  confer  .  .  . 
and  to  prove  him  with  questions  ";  who,  then,  "  delivered 
himself  with  that  gravity  and  maturity  above  his  years 
that  her  majesty  would  often  term  him,  Tlie  young  lord- 
heeper'' — we  find  him,  I  say,  just  past  the  age  of  twelve 


116  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

years,  in  the  spring  of  1573,  entering  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  remained  as  a  diligent  student  for 
three  years.  Just  what  the  nature  of  the  instruction  was, 
which  he  received  in  philosophy  —  from  which  in  those 
days  natural  science  was  not  sharply  separated  as  now  — 
we  do  not  know.  The  doctrine  taught  was,  however, 
termed  Aristotelian,  doubtless  with  a  large  admixture  of 
scholastic  form  and  interpretation.  It  failed  to  satisfy 
the  youthful  mind,  and,  doubtless,  rather  immature  judg- 
ment, of  Bacon,  but  not,  certainly,  for  the  same  reason 
for  which,  a  little  later,  the  Frenchman  Descartes  turned 
away  from  the  like  instruction  unsatisfied.  What  Des- 
cartes missed  was  a  basis  of  absolute  certainty  for  philo- 
sophical knowledge  —  the  knowledge  of  being  —  of  God, 
of  spirit  and  matter,  of  soul  and  body,  and,  by  implica- 
tion, of  those  moral  and  aesthetic  sciences  wliich  depend 
on  such  knowledge.  Bacon,  on  the  other  hand,  was  dis- 
contented at  the  material  fruitlessness  of  the  doctrine 
taught  him,  at  the  absence  (to  employ  an  expression  sub- 
sequently used  by  himself)  of  "industrious  observations, 
grounded  conclusions,  and  profitable  inventions  and  dis- 
coveries." Not  the  ontological  question  as  to  the  abso- 
lute nature  of  reality,  no  unsolved,  or  apparently  un- 
solved, riddle  of  "fate,  free-will,  and  providence"  trou])led 
him  or  occupied  primarily  his  attention.  Ilis  thoughts 
were  concentrated,  or  beginning  to  be  concentrated,  on 
the  knowledge  of  physical  phenomena  and  the  uses  to  be 
derived  from  such  knowledge. 

Shortly  after  leaving  the  University  we  find  Bacon 
accompanying  Sir  Amyas  Paulet,  the  English  ambas- 
sador, to  Paris,  and,  during  the  two  years  and  more  of 
his  residence  in  France,  travelling  extensively  in  the  prov- 


FRANCIS  BACON.  117 

inces  of  that  country.  Returning  in  1579,  upon  the 
death  of  his  father,  and  being  obliged,  owing  to  the 
slightuess  of  the  fortune  left  him,  to  choose  some  pro- 
fession by  which  to  earn  his  living,  he  adopted  the  law. 
His  devotion  to  the  study  of  the  law  did  not  keep  him 
from  having  a  prudent  eye  to  the  chances  for  political 
advancement  and  preferment  at  the  court.  Indeed,  Dr. 
Rawley,  his  friend  and  biographer,  very  naively,  and  with 
a  quaint  air  of  truth,  remarks,  "  Notwithstanding  that  he 
professed  the  law  for  his  livelihood  and  subsistence,  yet  his 
heart  and  affection  were  more  carried  after  the  affairs  and 
places  of  estate";  he  made  the  law  "(as  himself  said) 
but  as  an  accessory,  and  not  his  principal  study." 

In  1580  began  the  correspondence  with  his  uncle, 
Lord  Burghley,  the  queen's  lord-treasurer,  asking  that 
his  influence  might  be  exerted  in  the  writer's  behalf.  In 
1584  he  entered  parliament  as  member  for  Melcombe,  in 
Dorsetshire.  His  advancement  at  the  bar  was  rapid. 
"His  birth  and  other  capacities"  brought  him  frequently 
to  court  and  to  "  the  queen's  eye,  who  would  often  grace 
him  with  private  and  Iree  communication,  not  only  about 
matters  of  his  profession  or  business  in  law,  but  also 
about  the  arduous  affairs  of  state ;  from  whom  she  received 
from  time  to  time  great  satisfaction.  Nevertheless,  though 
she  cheered  him  much  with  the  bounty  of  her  counte- 
nance, yet  she  never  cheered  him  Avith  the  bounty  of  her 
hand."  In  other  words,  the  queen  honored  but  did  not 
enrich  him,  save  only  (through  Lord  Burghley's  influence 
in  1589)  with  "one  dry  reversion  of  the  register's  office  in 
the  Star  Chamber,  worth  about  £1,600  jper  annum,  for 
which  he  waited  in  expectation  fully,  or  near,  twenty  years 
[till  1608;  he  then  administered  it  by  deputy]  ;  of  which 


118  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

his  lordship  would  say  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  time,  that  it 
was  like  another  man^s  ground  buttaling  on  his  house, 
which  might  mend  his  prospect,  but  it  did  not  fill  his 
barn."  And  it  was  or  seemed  of  special  consequence  to 
Bacon  that  his  barn  should  be  filled,  partly  because  he 
was  and  ever  remained  in  the  uncomfortable  position  of  a 
man  in  debt,  and  partly  because  he  had  undertaken  what 
was,  in  his  view,  to  be  the  most  vast  of  conquests,  the  plan 
for  which  he  had  roughly  announced  in  a  tractate  (now 
lost)  somewhat  ambitiously  entitled  "The  Greatest  Birth 
of  Time"  {Temporis  Partus  Maximus).  Bacon,  namely, 
carrying  over  into  the  domain  of  mind  a  certain  lordly 
instinct  of  domination  and  world-conquest,  which  it  is 
instructive  to  note,  had,  in  a  letter  to  the  lord-treasurer, 
his  uncle,  written  at  the  age  of  one-and-thirty,  made  use 
of  these  words:  "I  have  taken  all  knowledge  to  be  my 
province."  It  was  his  purpose  to  clear  this  province  of 
roving  invaders,  and,  taking  possession  of  it,  to  put  it 
under  such  an  excellent  system  of  administration  that 
its  peace  and  prosperity  should  be  henceforth  assured. 
"This,"  he  continued,  "whether  it  be  curiosity  or  vain- 
glory, or  nature,  or  (if  one  take  it  favorably)  7;/n7a«Mro- 
pia,  is  so  fixed  in  my  mind  as  it  cannot  be  removed." 
Evidently  the  fixed  idea  of  the  reformer  possessed  Francis 
Bacon.  But  in  order  to  execute  the  proposed  plan  of 
subjugation  and  reform,  leisure  and  freedom  from  dis- 
tracting material  anxieties  seemed  indispensable,  and  to 
secure  such  leisure  and  freedom,  no  way  appeared  likely 
to  be  shorter  and  quicker,  and  none  more  consonant  with 
the  aspirations  and  conscious  desert  of  one  born  in  Bacon's 
circumstances  and  with  his  peculiar  nature,  than  to  seek 
for  some  position  in  the  gift  of  the  crown,  upon  the  emol- 


FEANCIS  BACON".  119 

uments  of  which  he  could  support  himself  with  dignity, 
while  time  should  be  left  him  for  the  peculiar  work  he 
had  undertaken.  Hence  we  can  understand  that  the 
failure,  from  whatever  cause  (the  secret  opposition  of  his 
cousin,  Robert  Cecil,  is  alleged),  to  obtain  advancement  in 
the  service  of  the  crown,  could  not  but  be  doubly  dis- 
appointing. 

However,  as  years  pass  on  we  find  Bacon  still  in  pub- 
lic life.  In  the  parliament  summoned  in  1593  he  sat  as 
member  for  Middlesex.  Grave  questions  of  constitu- 
tional privilege  and  precedent  were  brought  before  that 
body,  and  in  the  discussion  of  them  Bacon  took  an  im- 
portant and  influential  part,  guided,  apparently,  by  a 
regard  for  the  true  interests  of  the  country  and  its  lib- 
erties, and  to  the  detriment  of  his  own  immediate  for- 
tunes. We  can  easily  imagine  what  must  have  been  the 
style  of  argument  of  the  man  who,  in  addition  to  his  well- 
attested  legal  acumen,  possessed  that  knowledge  of  his- 
tory and  that  practical  insight,  of  which,  in  his  Essays 
(first  published  four  years  later,  1597),  he  was  destined 
to  give  the  world  such  illustrious  evidence.  "  Eare  Ben 
Jonson  "  has  described  his  eloquence,  saying: 

"  No  man  ever  spoke  more  neatly,  more  pressly,  more  weightily, 
or  ever  suffered  less  emptiness,  less  idleness,  in  vi'hat  he  uttered." 

Some  time  before  this  had  begun  the  famous  friend- 
ship with  the  Earl  of  Essex,  the  issue  of  which  was  des- 
tined to  do  so  much  to  justify,  in  popular  estimation,  the 
last  of  the  epithets  applied  to  Bacon  in  Pope's  famous 
line: 

"The  wisest,  brightest,  meanest  of  mankind." 

Those  who,  delighting  in  malice,  and  determined  to 
thwart   Bacon's   bequest   of   his   name   and    memory   to 


120  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AXD   THINKERS. 

"men's  charitable  speeches,"  are  resolved  that  this  and 
other  passages  in  Bacon's  life  shall  read  as  a  story  of  un- 
mitigated shame,  will  read  and  accept  the  accounts  given, 
for  example,  by  Macaulay  in  his  essay  on  Bacon,  or 
Campbell  in  his  Lives  of  the  Lord  Chancellors.  Less 
passionate,  and  more  just  and  favorable  to  Bacon,  are  the 
matirrer  judgments  of  such  men  as  Mr.  Spcdding  {Lei- 
ters  and  Life  of  Francis  Bacon)  and  Prof.  Adamson 
(Article  Bacon,  Encycl.  Brit.,  9th  ed..  Vol.  III).  At  best, 
the  story  of  Bacon's  relations  with  Essex  is  melancholy 
enough.  For  it  represents  him  as  receiving  for  years  the 
affection  and  substantial  favor  of  the  Earl,  advising  and 
at'  times  warning  him  foithfully,  and  finally,  when  the 
latter  had  made  himself  manifestly,  and  by  his  own  final 
confession,  guilty  of  inexcusable  treason,  compelled  as  a 
servant  of  the  crown  and  of  truth  to  take  part  against 
his  former  friend  in  the  proceedings  which  resulted  in 
his  conviction  and  capital  punishment.  The  most,  as  it 
appears  to  me,  that  can  be  said  against  Bacon,  in  connec- 
tion with  this  affair,  is  that  the  conflict  of  old  affection, 
and  the  coincidence  of  immediate  personal  interest,  with 
the  final  obligation  to  proceed  actively  against  Essex,  did 
not,  as  far  as  I  have  learned,  produce,  on  the  one  hand, 
any  violent  laceration  of  feeling  or,  on  the  other,  any 
signs  of  morbidly  conscientious  self-questionings  in  Ba- 
con's breast. 

Though  under  Elizabeth  Bacon's  standing  was  that  of 
one  of  the  learned  counsel,  yet  he  was  not  a  salaried  offi- 
cer, and  his  pecuniary  fortunes  languished.  At  one  time 
he  contemplated  mending  his  condition  by  marriage  with 
a  wealthy,  but  in  other  respects  undesirable,  widow. 
This,  however,  did  not  succeed,  and  in  the  year  1598  he 


FRANCIS    BACON.  121 

was  once  arrested  for  debt  and  taken  to  a  sponging-house. 
"But,"  as  Eawley,  his  chaplain-biographer,  curiously 
puts  it,  "though  he  stood  long  at  a  stay  in  the  days  of 
his  mistress  Queen  Elizabeth,  yet  after  the  change,  and 
coming  in  of  his  new  master  King  James,  he  made  a 
great  progress;  by  whom  he  was  much  comforted  in 
places  of  trust,  honour,  and  revenue."  "Nine  times," 
indeed,  according  to  Bacon's  own  enumeration,  did  his 
royal  master  raise  and  advance  him;  "thrice  in  dignity 
and  six  times  in  office."  Soon  after  the  accession  of 
King  James,  Bacon  was  knighted.  He  was  also  con- 
tinued in  the  same  standing  which  he  had  held  under 
Queen  Elizabeth,  as  Counsel  Learned  Extraordinary. 
His  subsequent  appointments  were  as  follows:  in  1607, 
to  be  Solicitor  General;  in  1613,  Attorney  General;  1616, 
Privy-Councillor;  1617,  Lord  Keeper  of  the  Great  Seal; 
1618,  Lord  Chancellor.  In  1618  he  was  created  Baron 
Verulam,  and  in  1621  Viscount  St.  Alban's. 

Bacon  was  not  merely  a  student  and  a  man  of  reflection ; 
he  was  also  a  politician  and  knew  and  used  the  arts  of  the 
politician.  He  was  throughout  his  whole  career  a  per- 
tinacious wire-puller.  He  prudently  and  energetically 
kept  all  his  irons  constantly  in  the  fire.  He  flooded 
the  king  and  all  his  influential  friends  with  letters  urging 
his  own  fitness  for  important  offices.  (And  in  urging 
his  claims  Bacon  always  knew  how  to  quote  not  only  the 
ancients  in  general  but  also,  in  particular,  "  Scripture  to 
his  purpose";  as,  for  example,  when,  in  a  letter  to  King 
James,  he  says  that  "  Perceiving  how,  at  this  time,  pre- 
ferments of  law  fly  about  mine  ears,  to  some  above  me, 
and  to  some  below  me,  I  did  conceive  your  majesty  may 
think  it  rather  a  kind  of  dullness,  or  want  of  faith,  than 
6 


122  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

modesty,  if  I  should  not  come  with  my  pitcher  to  JacoVs 
[=  James's]  well,  as  others  do,")  He  sagaciously  took 
time  by  the  fore-lock  and  sued  in  advance  for  the  rever- 
sion of  valuable  and  honorable  appointments.  Every  step 
in  his  promotion  was  zealously  recommended  by  himself. 
A  sincere  believer  in  royal  prerogative,  Bacon  made  him- 
self the  constant  and  generally  trusted  adviser  of  royalty. 
To  this  honest  service  was  added  that  welcome  adulation 
of  the  royal  intellect  and  learning,  of  which  specimens 
are  furnished  in  the  dedication  of  his  principal  philo- 
sophical writings  to  King  James.  That  in  all  this  Bacon 
was  moved  only  by  a  base  and  narrow  self-interest,  is  a 
preposterous  supposition.  He  was  conscious  of  rare  pow- 
ers. The  circumstances  of  his  birth  and  station  would  nat- 
urally incline  him  to  seek,  as  a  natural  right,  what  others 
could  not  aspire  to  without  being,  perha])S  justly,  charged 
with  unlawful  ambition.  While  not  in  advance  of  his  age 
(the  rather  behind  it)  in  regard  to  some  matters  of  con- 
stitutional policy  and  riglit,  he  had  large  views  and  gen- 
erous aims  witli  reference  to  the  establishment  of  order 
and  prosperity  in  church  and  state,  and  he  earnestly  and 
lawfully  desired  the  opportunity  to  labor  for  their  realiza- 
tion and  attainment.  Besides,  we  must  remember,  with 
reference  not  simply  to  this  matter  of  the  means  and 
arts,  by  which  Bacon  rose,  but  also,  and  much  more,  to 
many  portions  of  his  official  life  which  have  been  far 
more  severely  criticised,  that  while  ethical  standards  may 
be  and  are  in  fact  inherently  invariable,  yet  the  practical 
interpretation  and  application  of  them  in  the  judgment 
of  conduct  is  visibly  subject  to  great  variations.  It  was 
less  than  a  half  century  before  the  birth  of  Bacon  when 
Macchiavelli  published  his  notorious  book,  II  Principe,  in 


FRAN"CIS    BACON".  123 

which  political  ethics  was  made  to  sanction  the  use  of  any 
means,  no  matter  how  foul,  by  which  the  purposes  of  the 
state,  or  what  amounted  to  the  same  thing,  of  its  sover- 
eign ruler,  could  be  most  directly  accomplished.  Grant- 
ing that  the  book  of  Macchiavelli  is  to  be  considered  as 
exactly  reflecting  only  the  political  methods  prevalent  in 
Italy,  and  during  an  exceptional  and  passing  period,  and 
granting,  also,  that  political  morality  had,  in  Bacon's  time, 
made  greater  advances  in  England  than  in  any  other  civ- 
ilized country,  the  fact  still  remains  that,  in  substance, 
what  we  now  term  Macchiavelism,  abounding  as  it  does 
in  heinous  offenses  against  abstract  morality,  was  by  no 
means  then  considered  as  altogether  and  essentially  im- 
moral. At  all  events  the  necessity  of  the  state  was  easily 
held  to  compel,  and  practically  to  justify,  occasional,  or 
even  frequent,  deviations  from  the  path  of  simple,  abso- 
lute, self-respecting,  and  self-consistent  morality.  Under 
those  circumstances  it  would  seem  that  the  man  who  was 
set  to  serve  the  prince  must  not  be  one  who  would  be 
guided  by  a  principle  of  universal  love  ("Love  thy  neigh- 
bor as  thyself,"  the  principle  of  all  social  ethics),  but 
rather  one  wlio  could  ignore  the  dictates  of  such  a  senti- 
ment, or  even  allow  himself  to  be  guided  by  an  opposite 
one,  in  the  service  of  his  sovereign's  interests  and  of  his 
own,  indissolubly  bound  up  with  the  former.  Something 
like  this  view  was  obviously  present  to  the  mind  of  Bacon 
when,  in  his  essay  "  Of  Goodness  and  Goodness  of  Na- 
ture," mentioning  that  "  there  be  that  in  tlieir  nature  do 
not  affect  the  good  of  others,"  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  those 
in  this  class  whose  "  malignity  "  is  of  "  the  deeper  sort " 
and  "turneth  to  envy  and  mere  mischief,"  adding:  "Such 
dispositions  are  the  very  errours  of  human  nature;  and 


124  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

yet  they  are  the  fittest  timber  to  make  great  politiques  of; 
like  to  knee  timber,  that  is  good  for  sliips,  that  are  or- 
dained to  be  tossed  ;  but  not  for  building  houses  that  siiall 
stand  firm."  Are  we  to  consider  this  passage  as  a  sort  of 
confession  —  and  indeed  a  sufficiently  direct  one  —  on  the 
part  of  Bacon  the  practical  philosopher,  who  certainly 
knew  what  were  the  "colours"  of  moral  good  and  evil  — 
that  he  as  a  "politique,"  or  statesman,  was  such  only  in 
view  of  his  at  least  partial  possession  of  one  of  those 
warped  natures  —  "knee  timber"  —  which  cannot  enter 
into  the  building  of  a  firm  and  steadfast  moral  character, 
but  are  ordained  to  be  tossed  ?  At  all  events,  I  have 
indicated  the  direction  in  which,  as  I  believe,  we  must  — 
as  bound  in  charity  —  look  for  considerations  sufficient  to 
palliate  the  severity  of  our  moral  judgment  concerning 
incidents  in  his  public  career  otherwise  absolutely  inde- 
fensible {i\s,e.g.  in  connection  with  the  celebrated  Peacham 
affair). 

But  to  return  to  the  point  whence  this  digression 
began.  Bacon's  own  experience  sufliciently  illustrated  the 
truth  of  the  following  observations,  taken  from  his  essay, 
entitled  "Of  Great  Place":  "The  rising  unto  place  is 
laborious;  and  by  pains  men  come  to  greater  pains;  and 
it  is  base;  and  by  indignities  men  come  to  dignities. 
The  standing  is  slippery,  and  the  regress  is  either  a  down- 
fall, or  at  least  an  eclipse,  which  is  a  melanclioly  thing. 
Cum  non  sis  qui  fucris,  non  esse  cur  veiis  vivcrc"  Bacon's 
"regress"  was  a  "downfall,"  sudden, precipitous,  disastrous; 
it  was  also  a  final  and  total  "  eclipse  "  of  his  public,  official, 
career ;  and  had  he  not  at  the  same  time  had  and  fol- 
lowed, all  along,  with  the  better  half  of  his  soul,  another 
and  serener  and  nobler  career,  as  a  man  of  letters,  and 


FRANCIS   BACON".  125 

philanthropic  missionai-y  of  science,  accompanied,  as  seems 
evident  to  me,  with  a  devout,  self-renouncing  christian 
trust,  he  might,  before  his  death,  well  have  employed  the 
language  of  the  Latin  apothegm  above  cited  by  him : 
"  When  you  are  no  longer  what  you  were,  you  have  no 
reason  for  wishing  to  live."  I  refer,  of  course,  to  the 
charges  of  judicial  corruption,  which  were,  in  parliament, 
in  the  spring  of  the  year  1621,  brought  against  Bacon, 
and  which,  being  sustained  by  his  own  penitent  confes- 
sion, led,  early  in  May,  to  his  deposition,  by  the  House  of 
Lords,  from  the  office  of  Lord  Chancellor,  to  the  imposi- 
tion of  an  enormous  fine  (remitted  by  the  king),  to  im- 
})risonment  in  the  Tower  during  the  king's  pleasure  (he 
sat  in  the  Tower  four  days),  to  his  incapacitation  forever 
"  for  any  office,  place  or  employment  in  the  state  or  com- 
monwealth," and  to  his  exclusion  from  entrance  within 
the  verge  of  the  court  (a  condition  which  was  subse- 
quently annulled).  The  spectacle  of  a  conspicuous  and 
honorable  reputation  blasted  is,  alas!  one  which,  in  all 
ages,  occurs  but  too  often.  Unha])pily,  also,  human  na- 
ture too  often  takes  an  inhuman  delight  in  witnessing  the 
mournful  spectacle,  and  proceeds  at  once,  most  fallaciously 
and  ungenerously,  to  argue  from  the  just  downfall  of  rep- 
utation to  the  utter  absence  or  ruin  of  any  germ  or  basis 
of  real  character  and  moral  worth  in  the  unlucky  victim. 
Profound  truth  is  contained  in  that  ethical  psychology 
which  may  be  discovered  underlying  the  warnings  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth:  "Judge  not,  that  ye  be  not  judged,"  and, 
"  Let  him  that  thinketh  he  staudeth  take  heed  lest  he 
fall."  Our  judgment  upon  others  is  at  once  a  judgment 
upon  ourselves ;  for  are  not  they  of  the  same  family  as 
ourselves  ?   are  not  we  like  unto  them  ?     Let  us  beware, 


126  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

then,  of  joining  in  the  self-ignorant  and  self-condemning 
hue  and  cry,  whicli  customarily  follows  public  disgrace, 
and  which  has  been  abundantly,  and  still  is  persistently 
raised  by  many  about  the  memory  of  the  fallen  Lord 
Chancellor.  We  may  admit  and  deplore  and  profitably 
take  warning  from  his  discovered  fault,  but  we  may  not, 
in  charity,  magnify  it  beyond  its  real,  or  into  preter- 
human, proportions,  and,  in  particular,  in  the  absence  of 
convincing  proofs  to  the  contrary,  we  have  no  right  to 
charge  that  it  was  greater  or  other  than  he  himself  ad- 
mitted. 

Bacon  once  alludes  (in  a  letter  to  the  king)  to  his  own 
frailty  and  to  "  the  abuse  of  tiie  times,"  of  which,  he  said, 
he  might  "partake."  But  he  did  not,  for  he  could  not, 
iu  the  end  seek  to  shelter  himself  behind  this  plea.  "I 
do  again  confess,"  said  he,  in  a  letter  to  the  House  of 
Lords,  "that  on  the  points  charged  upon  me,  although 
they  should  be  taken  as  myself  have  declared  them,  there 
is  a  great  deal  of  corruption  and  neglect,  for  which  I  am 
heartily  and  penitently  sorry,  and  submit  myself  to  the 
judgment,  mercy  and  grace  of  the  court."  The  acts 
charged  (twenty-eight  cases  were  specified)  were  (in  gen- 
eral) the  taking  of  fees  or  bribes  from  suitors  whose  cases 
he  was  to  decide.  Bacon,  admitting  the  general  truth  of 
the  specifications,  denied  that  any  of  them  were  cases  of 
"bargain  and  contract  for  reward  to  prevent  justice,  pen- 
dente liteJ^  Indeed,  the  very  first  comi)laint  against  him 
was  brought  by  one  who  alleged  that  Bac>)n  had  received 
from  him  a  sum  of  money  while  a  suit  was  still  in  prog- 
ress, and  had  afterward  decided  against  him.  What  this 
complainant  and  some  others  had  to  find  fault  with  was 
precisely  the  incorruptibility  of  Bacon's  judgment,  and 


FRANCIS   BACON.  127 

their  own  folly  in  bestowing  their  money  for  nought. 
Bacon's  fault  was  a  too  great,  but  not  wholly  unnatural 
or  inexplicable,  readiness  to  receive  the  money  offered. 
But  while  Bacon  thus  denied  that  he  had  ever  received 
bribes  as  of  express  contract  to  pervert  justice,  he  speci- 
fies two  other  ways  in  which  bribes  may  be  taken,  and 
claims  that  they  cover  all  the  cases  which  could  be 
charged  against  him  :  the  one,  "where  the  judge  conceives 
the  cause  to  be  at  an  end,  by  the  information  of  the  party 
or  otherwise,  and  useth  not  such  diligence  as  he  ought 
to  inquire  of  it";  the  other,  "where  the  cause  is  really 
ended,  and  it  is  sine  fraude,  without  relation  to  any  pre- 
cedent promise."  As  to  the  first  of  these  cases  he  admits: 
"I  doubt  on  some  particulars  I  may  be  faulty.  And  for 
the  last,  I  conceived  it  to  be  no  fault,  but  therein  I 
desire  to  be  better  informed,  that  I  may  be  twice  peni- 
tent, once  for  the  fact  and  again  for  the  error."  Upon 
this  statement  of  Bacon's  let  us  suspend  our  judgment, 
and  believe  that  he  was  conscious  of  complete  purity  in 
all  his  past  judicial  intentions  when  he  declared,  "I  was 
the  justest  judge  that  was  in  England  these  fifty  years," 
though  he  added,  "it  was  the  justest  censure  in  parlia- 
ment that  was  these  two  hundred  years." 

The  story  of  the  last  five  years  of  Bacon's  life  contains 
much  to  stir  at  once  our  pity  and  our  admiration.  We 
are  reminded  of  a  great  ship,  returning  weather-beaten, 
storm-tossed,  rent,  from  a  long  voyage,  and  compelled 
still  to  plow  its  proud  way  through  the  few  leagues  which 
yet  separate  it  from  the  haven's  rest,  against  winds  of 
passion  and  waves  of  anxiety  and  distress.  Wracked 
with  mental  agony  and  physical  disease,  we  find  Bacon 
suing  piteously  to  have  one  after  another  of  the  ingre- 


128  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

dients  in  his  cup  of  punishment  removed  from  him,  and 
then,  when  his  request  was  granted,  desiring  and  buoy- 
antly hoping  to  be  restored  to  the  liighest  and  most  hon- 
orable positions  of  service  near  the  person  of  his  sovereign ; 
at  last,  grievously  disappointed,  crying  out  in  his  bitter- 
ness, "The  talent  whicli  God  has  given  me  I  have  mis- 
spent in  things  for  which  I  was  least  fit."  During  all  this 
time  he  maintains  a  wonderful  activity  of  literary  pro- 
duction and  scientific  research,  and  at  last,  childless  and 
alienated  from  his  wife,  dies  on  the  morning  of  the  9th 
of  April,  Easter  Sunday,  1626. 

Bacon,  acknowledging  to  Sir  Thomas  Bodlcy  his 
many  errors,  mentions,  as  the  "great  one  which  led  the 
rest,  that  knowing  myself  by  inward  calling  to  be  better 
fitted  to  hold  a  book  than  play  a  part,  I  have  led  my  life 
in  civil  causes,  for  which  I  was  not  very  fit  by  nature, 
and  more  unfit  by  preoccupation  of  mind."  Had  this 
preoccupation  been  less  genuine  and  intense  than  it 
really  was,  Bacon's  place  in  history  would  have  been  in- 
finitely less  important  and  interesting  than  it  now  is.  It 
is  by  the  fruits  of  his  study,  his  reflection,  his  intellectual 
spirit  and  literary  inspiration,  that  he  still  lives.  I  need 
not  at  length  advert  to  the  place  which  Bacon  occupies 
in  the  history  of  English  literature.  He  is  well  known 
as  the  facile  master  and  the  founder  in  English  literature 
of  that  favorite  style  of  composition,  the  didactic  and  re- 
flective Essay.  Montaigne,  in  France,  had  preceded  him 
by  twenty  years  in  the  use  of  this  literary  form,  but  in  a 
different  spirit.  The  essays  of  Bacon  contain  the  classical- 
ism  of  the  Renaissance  combined  with  the  practical  moral 
sense  of  the  Englishnum.  His  History  of  King  Henry 
Vn  was  written  under  the  direction  and  supervision  of 


FRANCIS   BACON.  129 

King  James,  by  which  it  was  not  improved.  Among  the 
writings  classed  as  "religious"  is  a  "Confession  of 
Faith,"  which  Mr.  Spedding  terms  a  "  sumnia  theologice 
digested  into  ten  pages  of  the  finest  English  of  the  days 
when  its  tones  were  finest,"  and  with  reason.  The  char- 
acteristic of  such  English  seems  to  me  to  be  its  naive 
dignity ;  —  I  use  the  epithet  naive  in  the  sense  in  which 
Schiller  employs  it,  when  he  applies  it,  as  opposed  to 
^^sentimental,''''  to  the  works  of  nature's  poets.  Homer 
and  Shakespeare.  Two  prayers  of  Bacon's,  the  Student's, 
and  the  Writer's,  Prayer,  give  touching  evidence,  in  noble 
form,  of  the  author's  religious  spirit. 

I  mentioned  in  the  former  part  of  this  chapter  Bacon's 
own  early  declaration  that  he  had  "  taken  all  knowledge 
to  be  his  province."  At  a  maturer  age,  in  an  account  of 
the  "  Plan "  of  a  great  work  contemplated  by  him,  he 
affirms,  with  reference  to  this  "province,"  his  intention 
to  be  not  like  "an  augur  taking  auspices,  but  .  .  . 
like  a  general  who  means  to  take  possession."  Such  ex- 
pressions denote  great  self-confidence,  and  this  quality  we 
are  accustomed  to  look  upon  with  mistrust,  if  not  with 
positive  aversion.  And  yet  it  is  only  an  overweening  self- 
confidence,  where  the  self  in  which  confidence  is  placed 
is  only  a  spectral  shadow,  and  not  a  living,  solid  sub- 
stance, that  is  either  morally  reprehensible  or  dangerous. 
There  is  a  self-confidence  which  is  well-founded  and 
noble,  and  in  every  relation  in  life,  physical,  intellectual, 
and  moral,  the  advantage  is  with  those  who  can  and  do 
possess  it.  Possunt,  quia  posse  videntur.  Besides,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  we  have  not  yet  quitted  the 
epoch  of  Renaissance  hope,  faith,  and  courage.  Renais- 
sance meant  youth,  and  youth  means  a  belief  in  the  pos- 


130  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

sibility  even  of  the  impossible.  If  the  Renaissance  cor- 
responded in  reality -to  its  name,  it  could  not  be  content 
(whether  in  this  it  showed  its  wisdom  or  not)  simply  to 
admire  and  to  feed  its  fresh  young  life  upon  the  restored 
riches  of  the  past.  Nay,  it  would  argue,  what  man  has 
once  done  why  may  he  not  do  again?  —  and  more,  and 
better;  for  is  not  man  older  and  more  mature,  hence 
wiser  and  stronger,  than  ever  before  ?  And  so  we  dis- 
cover two  successive  (but  partly  synchronous)  streams  of 
the  Renaissance  life,  the  one  reproductive  and  assimila- 
tive, the  other  new-creative.  And  the  representatives  of 
the  latter  movement  are  scarcely  less  numerous  than 
those  of  the  former.  Gradually  we  see  them  letting  go 
the  leading-strings  of  their  ancient  guides,  and  striking 
out,  or  professing  to  strike  out,  entirely  de  novo.  Thus 
it  is  that  we  find  Descartes,  who  shares  with  Bacon  the 
honor  (and  to  whom,  technically  and  strictly  speaking, 
belongs  the  principal  share  of  the  honor)  of  being  termed 
the  founder  of  modern  philosophy,  professedly  breaking 
entirely  the  chain  of  connection  with  all  foregoing  phi- 
losophy, and  seeking  altogether  independently  and  de 
novo  a  starting-point  from  which,  Archimedes-like,  he 
may,  as  with  a  lever,  move  and  control  the  whole  world 
of  thought  and  of  cognizable  truth.  Of  the  same  mind, 
in  general,  is  Bacon,  and  we  are  to  consider  that  when  he 
expresses  himself  in  tones  like  those  above  repeated,  he  is 
the  spokesman  not  more  of  himself  than  of  his  age;  he 
is  one  of  the  heralds  of  the  modern  era  of  thought,  and 
must  speak  in  loud  and  confident  tones. 

Just  as  Descartes  cleared  the  w'ay  for  his  own  con- 
structive speculations  by  first  enforcing  upon  himself  a 
methodical   and    universal  doubt  respecting  all   notions 


FRANCIS    BACON.  131 

hitherto  received,  so  Bacon  requires,  of  the  modern  renas- 
cent mind,  as  a  condition  precedent  to  the  entering  upon 
the  possession  of  the  province  of  "all  knowledge,"  that 
it  rid  itself  of  all  its  previously  received  ideas  {idola, 
false,  vain  ideas).  These  are  Idola  of  the  Tribe,  the  Cave, 
the  Market-place,  and  the  Theatre,  as  he  in  his  figurative 
language  terms  them,  or  false  and  ill-founded  opinions 
resulting  from  an  universal  defect  of  the  human  mind, 
or  peculiar  to  the  individual,  or  due  to  the  misleading 
use  of  language,  or  derived  from  the  dogmas  of  earlier 
philosophers.  The  mind  is  not  only,  considering  its  own 
present  possessions  as  prepossessions,  to  make  a  clean 
sweep  of  them,  thus  making  itself  like  to  a  waxed  tablet, 
as  yet  unwritten.  It  must  also  keep  itself  in  this  condi- 
tion until,  under  the  operation  of  a  scientific  method  fitly 
framed  to  guide  it  to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth  and  noth- 
ing but  tlie  truth,  it  is  provided  with  its  appropriate 
nourishment.  To  this  end  the  flights  of  fancy  must  be 
checked.  Men  are  called  upon  to  refrain  for  a  time  from 
the  highest  generalizations.  "The  understanding  must 
not  be  supplied  with  wings,  but  rather  hung  with 
weights,  to  keep  it  from  leaping  and  flying."  One  of  the 
marked  characteristics  of  modern,  and  especially  of  Brit- 
ish, thought  since  Bacon's  time  has  been  the  resolute 
tendency  to  live  up  to  this  maxim. 

But  what  is  the  true  and  lawful  method,  the  only  safe 
and  successful  method  of  liuman  knowledge?  It  is  the 
glory  of  having  answered  this  question,  which  alone 
Bacon  claims  for  himself.  That  province  of  all  knowl- 
edge on  which  he  had  proposed  to  set  his  mark,  he  does 
not  finally  profess  to  have  conquered,  but  only  to  have 
shown  how,  and  how  only,  it  can  and  must  be  conquered. 


132  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

But  his  conception  of  the  method  of  knowledge  is  deter- 
mined by  his  conception  of  the  nature,  or  rather  tlie  true 
object  and  goal,  of  knowledge,  and  hence  our  exposition 
may  better  proceed  from  the  latter  to  the  former. 

The  title  which  Bacon  proposed  for  his  great  work 
contains  a  direct  suggestion  of  that  which  he  regarded 
as  the  true  and  lawful,  and  only  attainable,  goal  of  human 
cognition.  That  Avork  was  to  be  entitled  Magna  Instati- 
ratio,  or  Great  Restoration  (Renewal,  Reparation).  Res- 
toration— but  of  what?  Of  nothing  less  than  i\\Q  impe- 
riwn  naturae  —  the  empire  of  nature  —  to  man.  From 
this  empire,  as  Bacon  holds,  man  fell,  when,  seeking  that 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil  on  which  a  curse  was  set,  he 
lapsed  from  the  favor  of  God.  For  the  restoration  of  the 
latter,  supernatural  provision  is  made  in  the  Christian 
plan  of  redemption.  Tiie  former  it  is  man's  business  to 
recover  by  his  own  exertions. 

The  empire  of  nature  is  mastered  by  knowing  nature. 
This  knowledge  leads  to  useful  arts,  inventions,  discov- 
eries. By  these  the  estate  of  man  is  relieved.  They  are 
"fruits  and  works,"  and  "  fruits  and  works,"  says  Bacon, 
"are  as  it  were  sponsors  and  sureties  for  the  truth  of 
philosophies."  "The  true  and  lawful  goal  of  the  sciences 
is  none  other  than  this:  that  human  life  be  endowed 
Avith  new  discoveries  and  powers."  From  this  point  of 
view  Bacon  finds  it  easy  to  declaim  against  earlier  philoso- 
phers, and  especially  against  the  "  professorial "  and  dis- 
putatious Greeks,  whose  "  wisdom  abounds  in  words  but 
is  barren  of  works." 

That  knowledge  of  nature  which  is  available  for  the 
end  just  stated  can,  obviously,  not  relate  to  the  highest 
generalities.    It  is  not  such  knowledge  as  the  metaphys- 


FRANCIS    BACON.  133 

ical  philosopher  seeks,  when  he  inquires  concerning  the 
ultimate  essence  and  ground  of  physical  existence.  It  is 
the  knowledge  of  the  proximate  causes  and  observable 
laws  of  phenomena.  It  is  this  knowledge  which,  en- 
abling us  to  "command  nature  in  action,"  leads  to  the 
production  of  "eflFects." 

What,  now,  is  the  method  which  can  conduct  to  such 
knowledge  ?  It  will  consist,  first,  in  placing  the  mind  in 
a  purely  receptive  attitude  with  reference  to  nature.  We 
are  to  "wait  upon  nature" — in  agreement  with  the  first 
member  of  Bacon's  favorite  (though  not  original)  apo- 
thegm, "Man  the  servant  and  interpreter  of  nature." 
We  are  to  receive  and  record  the  impressions  which  she 
produces  with  the  unprejudiced  simplicity  of  the  little 
child.  And  then,  further,  our  "  interpretation"  of  her  is 
to  consist  in  our  making  ourselves  her  mouth-piece.  She, 
duly  questioned  and  listened  to,  will  infallibly  disclose  to 
us  all  that  it  is  needful  or  useful,  or  indeed  strictly  pos- 
sible, for  us  to  know  respecting  her  secrets.  To  this  end 
dissection  of  nature  is  better  than  abstraction.  "My 
logic,"  says  Bacon,  "aims  to  teach  and  instruct  the  under- 
standing, not  that  it  may  with  the  slender  tendrils  of  the 
mind  snatch  at  and  lay  hold  of  abstract  notions  (as  the 
common  logic  does),  but  that  it  may  in  very  truth  dissect 
nature,  and  discover  the  virtues  and  actions  of  bodies, 
with  their  laws  as  determined  in  matter:  so  that  this 
science  flows  not  merely  from  the  nature  of  the  mind, 
but  also  from  the  nature  of  things;  no  wonder  that  it  is 
everywhere  sprinkled  and  illustrated  with  speculations 
and  experiments  in  nature,  as  examples  of  the  art  I 
teach  "  (N.  0.  II,  52).  "Starting  directly  from  the  simple 
sensuous  perception  "  (I  cite  Bacon),  the  mind  must  "  be 


134  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

from  the  very  outset  not  left  to  take  its  own  course,  but 
guided  at  every  step;  and  the  business  be  done  as  if  by 
machinery"  (N.  0.,  Pref.).  Such  a  method  "leaves  but 
little  to  the  acuteness  and  strength  of  wits,  but  places  all 
wits  and  understandings  nearly  on  a  level.  For,  as  in 
the  drawing  of  a  straight  line,  or  a  perfect  circle,  much 
depends  on  the  steadiness  and  practice  of  the  hand,  if  it 
be  done  by  aim  of  hand  only,  but  if  with  the  aid  of  rule 
or  compass,  little  or  nothing;  so  it  is  exactly  with  my 
plan."  This  plan,  this  macliine,  the  use  of  which  was 
to  ensure  to  all  men  substantially  the  same  success  in 
prosecuting  natural  investigation,  is  "  induction."  "  Our 
whole  hope  lies  in  induction,"  cries  Bacon ;  resting  of 
course  on  experience  (which,  says  he,  "  is  by  far  the  best 
demonstration  "),  or  rather  on  experiment,  which  is  expe- 
rience methodically  directed  and  digested.  The  prepara- 
tion of  a  "Natural  and  Experimental  Uistory,"  or  descrip- 
tion of  observed  facts,  is  the  first  thing  in  order.  Then 
we  are  to  draw  up  three  "Tables  of  Instances" — the  first, 
of  instances  in  which  the  phenomenon  whose  cause  or 
nature  is  to  be  discovered  is  present;  the  second,  of  in- 
stances in  which  it  is  absent;  and  the  third,  of  instances 
in  which  it  is  present  in  varying  degrees.  The  third  and 
last  step  is  "Induction,  true  and  legitimate  induction, 
which  is  the  very  key  of  interpretation."  The  applica- 
tion of  it  rests  upon  a  supposilioii  concerning  the  essence 
of  natural  ]>henomcna,  wiiich  I  cannot  lieic  fully  explain. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  Bacon  supposes  nature  to  be  made 
up  of  a  limited  number  of  simple  natnres  or  "forms," 
which  are  to  the  phenomena  as  tiie  real  to  the  apparent, 
or  substance  to  accident,  or,  according  to  the  Baconian 
theory  of  causation  (compare  Spinoza's),  as  cause  to  effect. 


UtAiifttattCal. 

FKAKCIS   BACON".  135 

What  we  have  to  do,  then,  is  to  take  our  tables  of  in- 
stances and,  examining  the  latter  severally,  to  proceed  by 
a  "method  of  exclusions"  to  find  out  that  nature  which 
is  always  present  when  the  phenomenon  to  be  investigated 
is  present.  We  exclude,  namely,  first  those  "natures," 
which  being  present,  the  phenomenon  in  question  is  in- 
variably absent.  Then  those  are  excluded  which  are  less 
present  the  more  the  phenomenon  is  present,  and  vice 
versa,  and  so  on,  proceeding  by  a  mechanical  process  of 
sifting,  which  requires  but  a  slight  measure  of  intelli- 
gence, till  there  is  left  but  that  one  nature  which  of 
course,  and  necessarily,  will  be  held  to  account  for  the 
phenomenon,  and,  by  being  able  to  bring  about  or  con- 
trol which,  we  are  able  to  bring  about  or  control  the 
phenomenon.  A  partial  example,  and  the  only  one  offered 
by  Bacon,  is  given  in  the  second  book  of  the  Novum 
Organum,  where  heat  is  investigated,  and  motion  of  a 
certain  kind  (namely,  expansive,  upward  tending,  act- 
ing on  particles,  not  on  whole  bodies,  and  not  sluggish, 
but  rapid  and  violent)  is  concluded  to  be  its  ultimate 
"  nature  "  or  "  form." 

The  Magna  Instauratio  was  planned  to  consist  of  six 
parts.  The  Novum  Organum,  of  the  spirit  and  purpose 
of  which  I  have  just  been  giving  some  account,  was  to 
form  the  second  part.  Bacon  has  not  given  it  to  us  in 
systematic,  scholastic  form,  but  rather  in  a  series  of 
aphorisms.  The  first  part  was  to  relate  to  the  Divisions 
of  the  Sciences,  and  is  measurably  supplied  in  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Learning,  subsequently  rewritten  by  Bacon 
in  Latin,  and  enlarged,  under  the  title  De  Augtnentis 
Scientiarum.  A  few  paragraphs  near  the  beginning  of 
the  second  book  may  be  commended  to  any  who  would 


136  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

read  liberal,  large-minded  views  respecting  the  way  in 
which  institutions  for  the  advancement  of  learning  (  Uni- 
versities) should  be  conceived  and  endowed,  and  their 
professors  selected  and  rewarded.  Bacon's  contributions 
to  the  third  part,  "The  Phenomena  of  the  Universe;  or 
a  Natural  and  Experimental  History  for  the  Foundation 
of  Philosophy,"  are  among  the  least  successful  portions 
of  his  work.  In  them  he  rather  uncritically  records  as 
"phenomena  of  the  universe"  many  alleged  facts  which 
existed  only  in  the  ignorant  imaginations  of  him  and  his 
contemporaries.  To  the  fourth  and  fifth  parts,  entitled, 
respectively,  "  Ladder  of  the  Intellect,"  and  "  Forerunners; 
or.  Anticipations  of  the  New  Philosopliy,"  he  contributed 
still  less,  and  to  the  last,  "The  New  Philosophy;  or.  Active 
Science,"  nothing  at  all;  this  latter,  he  confessed,  lay 
"beyond  his  strength  and  his  hopes,"  but  he  surely  be- 
lieved that,  with  his  method,  it  would  certainly  follow  as 
a  "birth  of  time." 

Bacon's  place  in  the  history  of  philosophy  is  easily 
stated.  Of  philosophy  as  such,  in  distinction  from  physi- 
cal science,  he  had  but  slight  conception  and  still  slighter 
opinion.  For  the  great  truths  of  ethics,  which  it  is  one 
of  the  most  important  works  of  philosophy  to  investigate 
and  demonstrate.  Bacon  was  content  simply  (though  hon- 
estly enough)  to  have  recourse  to ''faith,"  or  else  to  let 
"suffrages  decide."  The  accurate  distinction  between  phi- 
losophy and  science  was  for  him,  practically,  as  for  his 
and  our  own  countrymen  generally,  lost  in  the  distinc- 
tion between  religion  and  "pliilosophy "  (or  "science"). 
Bacon's  tendency,  however,  is  to  make  physical  science 
and  its  method  coextensive  with  the  realm  of  all  knowl- 
edge and  all  method.     Physical  science  is  in  his  view  the 


FRANCIS   BACON".  137 

mother  and  type  of  all  sciences,  and  he  expressly  recom- 
mends the  application  of  its  method  to  all  subjects  —  the 
best  (or  worst)  result  of  which  (as  far  as  it  concerns  topics 
ordinarily  deemed  philosophical  or  akin  to  philosophy)  is 
seen  in  modern  descriptive,  empirical  psychology,  and  the 
mechanistic,  eudasmonistic  (or,  in  its  last  result,  pessi- 
mistic) ethics,  founded  exclusively  upon  it.  Hence  the 
justice  of  Prof.  Adamson's  remark:  '"'Into  questions  of 
metaphysics,  as  commonly  understood,  Bacon  can  hardly 
be  said  to  have  entered;  but  a  long  line  of  thinkers  have 
drawn  inspiration  from  him,  and  it  is  not  without  justice 
that  he  has  been  looked  upon  as  the  originator  and  guid- 
ing spirit  of  that  empirical  school  which  numbers  among 
its  adherents  such  names  as  Hobbes,  Locke,  Hume,  Hart- 
ley, Mill,  Condillac,  the  Encyclopedists,  and  many  others 
of  smaller  note."  (Article  Bacon,  Encyc.  Brit.,  9th  ed.) 
As  to  his  scientific  merits,  strictly  estimated,  scarcely 
more  can  be  said.  The  charge  that  he  was  at  most  only  a 
dildtcmtem  science  is  admitted  by  Prof.  Fowler,  of  Oxford, 
the  latest  sympathetic  editor  of  the  Novum  Organum,  to 
be  quite  just.  It  is  often  charged,  to  the  discredit  of 
Bacon's  scientific  insight,  that  he  steadily  refused  to 
admit  the  trutli  of  the  Copernican  astronomy,  notwith- 
standing that  it  was  generally  received  in  his  time  by  the 
ablest  men  of  science.  Of  the  scientific  merits  of  others 
who  had  preceded,  or  were  contemporaneous  with,  him 
{e.g.  Galileo,  Harvey,  etc.)  he  was  either  ignorant,  or  else 
purposely  ignored  them.  Of  some,  as,  for  example,  his 
countryman,  Gilbert,  founder  of  the  theory  of  magnetism, 
he  spoke  in  slighting  terms.  Bacon  undoubtedly  wrote  of 
"philosophy,"  as  Gilbert  himself  said,  too  much  "as  a 
Lord  Chancellor."  (Compare  Cowley's  lines: 
6* 


138  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKER8. 

"  Bacon,  at  last,  a  mighty  man,  arose, 
Whom  a  wise  king  and  nature  chose 
Lord  Chancellour  of  both  their  laws.'^) 

It  was  perhaps  partly  as  the  result  of  an  innate  tendency 
(and  certainly,  if  we  regard  it  abstractly,  a  very  foolish 
one)  to  regard  himself  as  (in  the  words  of  one  of  his  con- 
temporaries) the  "great  Secretary  of  Nature  and  all 
learning,"  that  he  fell  occasionally  into  a  tone  of  lordly 
contempt,  calculated  to  render  his  positive  errors  and 
ignorances  only  so  much  the  more  conspicuous  and  ridic- 
ulous. And  as  regards  his  formerly  oft-vaunted  method, 
so  far  is  he  from  having  invented  the  inductive  method  of 
investigation,  that  he  seems  to  have  been  ignorant  of  the 
real  form  of  logical  induction,  wliicli  had  been  known 
and  practiced  long  before  his  time.  It  is  well  known  that 
as  matter  of  fact  different  discoverers  have  gone  to  work 
in  ways  largely  different,  the  differences  being  determined 
by  peculiarities  of  personal  temperament,  or  of  circum- 
stance, or  of  subject-matter,  and  the  like.  As  a  particular 
"way  of  getting  at  results,"  perfectly  legitimate  for  Bacon, 
or  for  any  one  else  who  may  think  he  can  succeed  by  it, 
there  is  nothing  to  be  said  against  Bacon's  plan.  Only  it 
is  not  induction,  and  friends  and  foes  of  Bacon  agree  that 
scientific  discovery  never  has,  as  matter  of  fact,  resulted 
from  its  observance  as  such.  And  in  as  far  as  it  depends 
on  the  presupposition  that  mental  endowment  is  of  slight 
consequence  in  the  scientific  investigator,  and  that,  the 
method  being  supplied,  it  will  work  like  a  machine,  no 
matter  who  handles  it,  it  implies  that  which  is  radically, 
and  by  the  history  of  scientific  discovery  is  shown  to  be, 
false.  Scientific  discovery  is  like  poetic  creation,  and  cre- 
ates and  follows  its  own  laws  before  they  are  technically 


PRANCIS  BACON'.  139 

drawn  up,  formulated,  tabulated.  It  anticipates,  often 
half  unconsciously,  its  own  conclusions.  The  divining 
idea,  consciously  and  formally  expressed  as  hypothesis, 
precedes  and  determines  in  large  measure  the  method. 
In  other  words,  there  is  a  "scientific  use  of  the  imagina- 
tion"; there  is  an  organic,  unforced  mental  activity, 
necessary  as  well  for  successful  scientific  work  as  for  any 
other  characteristic  function  of  the  living  human  mind. 
But  if  these  things  be  so,  if,  in  the  somewhat  exag- 
gerated language  of  the  editor  of  "Mind,"  Prof.  Geo. 
Groom  Kobertson,  "science  and  philosophy  .  .  .  would 
be  to  all  intents  and  purposes  exactly  where  they  arc, 
though  he  had  never  been,  or  never  written,"  if  he  was 
neither  a  philosopher  nor  a  genuine  man  of  science,  what 
was  Bacon  ?  He  was  a  missionary,  a  preacher,  a  scientific 
protestant,  as  Socrates  was  a  philosophical  one.  Each  was 
possessed  with  something,  aye  much,  of  the  reformer's  in- 
tense narrowness.  To  Socrates,  speculations  such  as  his 
predecessors  had  indulged  in  respecting  physical  things 
on  earth,  and  in  the  "divine"  economy  of  the  heavens, 
were  both  useless  and  hopelessly  vain.  Man  must  know 
himself  as  a  moral  being,  and  in  insisting  upon  this, 
Socrates  started  a  stream  of  intellectual  tendency  which, 
more  than  any  other  in  the  history  of  pure  thought,  has 
enriched  philosophy,  and  left  fruits  (which  Bacon  pre- 
tended not  to  see)  in  the  life,  the  civilization,  the  charac- 
ter and  destiny  of  the  world's  best  races.  Bacon,  on  the 
other  hand,  with  equal  pertinacity,  insisted  precisely  on 
that  which  Socrates  had  rejected,  and  neglected  that 
which  for  Socrates  was  of  greatest  worth,  and  there  can 
be  no  question  that  the  impulse  to  scientific  inquiry 
whicli  lias  been  so  fruitfully  followed  up  during  the  last 


140  BRITISH   THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

two  centuries,  owes  an  immense  debt  to  Francis  Bacon's 
eloquence.  The  consequence  of  Socrates'  protest  and  mis- 
sion was  the  relative  neglect  of  physical  inquiry,  and  a 
rich  harvest  of  philosophical  truth  —  of  nourishment  for 
the  mind  and  heart  of  our  best  Occidental  culture.  The 
consequence  of  Bacon's  protest  and  mission  has  been,  in 
England  (and  considerably  in  France),  where  his  influ- 
ence was  greatest,  a  comparative  neglect  of  philosophical 
inquiry,  and  a  rich  harvest  of  material  power  through 
discoveries,  inventions  and  technical  arts.  The  imme- 
diate problem  now  is  to  hold  both  philosophy  and  science 
in  due  esteem,  to  recognize  the  fit  place,  as  well  as  the 
complete  mutual  harmony  of  each,  and  to  allow  each  to 
receive  its  proper  culture.  Only  so  can  our  culture  be, 
not  narrow  and  insular,  but  as  generous  as  man,  and  as 
broad  as  the  nature  of  things. 

It  is,  therefore,  equally  wide  of  the  mark  for  us  to 
term  Bacon,  with  Justus  von  Liebig,  a  coarse  charlatan,  a 
"scientific  nut-cracker"  to  his  royal  master  King  James; 
he  was  too  honest,  and  too  much  in  earnest  in  iiis  convic- 
tions for  tiuit;  or  to  say,  with  Lord  Campbell,  that  "he 
it  was  that  first  systematically  showed  the  true  object  of 
philosophical  inquiry,  and  the  true  means  by  wliich  that 
object  was  to  be  attained";  for  such  a  statement  as  this 
shows  only  the  grossest  ignorance  on  the  part  of  him  who 
makes  it.  We  can  only  say,  with  Prof.  Robertson,  that 
he  was  "a  preacher  in  a  time  of  intellectual  uprising," 
and  as  such  "  has  never  had  an  equal." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THOMAS  HOBBES. 

"Our  Savior,  God-man,  had  been  born  one  thousand 
five  hundred  and  eighty-eight  years.  In  Spanisli  harbors 
lay  anchored  the  famous  hostile  fleet  soon  to  perish  in  our 
sea.  It  was  early  spring-time,  and  the  fifth  day  of  April 
was  dawning.  At  this  time  I,  a  little  worm,  was  born, 
at  Malmesbury."  Thus,  at  the  age  of  eighty-four  years, 
did  he  whom  his  followers  and  admirers  termed  the 
"  Apostle  of  Malmesbury,"  Thomas  Hobbes,  begin  a  short 
metrical  account  (in  Latin)  of  his  own  life.  In  the  lines 
immediately  following,  the  philosopher-poet  grows  cir- 
cumstantial and  sings  the  praises  of  that  "no  mean 
town,"  his  birth-place,  mentioning,  among  other  things, 
that  "here  the  Latin  tongue  had  its  first  school"  (in  Eng- 
land). There  was  no  reason  to  be  ashamed  of  his  native 
place.  But,  he  continues,  "I  was  the  victim  of  unjust 
time,  and  along  with  me  numerous  ills  were  also  born. 
For  the  report  was  spread  abroad  among  our  towns  that 
with  that  fleet"  (the  Spanish  Armada,  termed  "  invin- 
cible") "the  last  day  of  our  nation  was  at  hand.  And 
then  my  mother  conceived  such  fear  that  she  gave  birth  to 
twins,  myself  and  Fear.  Hence  it  is,  as  I  believe,  that  I 
detest  my  country's  enemies,  and  love  peace,  in  the  com- 
pany of  the  muses  and  pleasant  companions."  If,  as  is 
the  fact,  temperament  is  congenital,  and  is  often  deter- 
mined by  ante-natal  circumstances,  we  have,  in  this  ac- 

141 


142  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

count  which  Hobbes  gives  of  bis  birth,  the  physical  or  ge- 
netic key  to  one  side,  and  that  the  least  edifying  one,  of  his 
whole  life.  Fear,  his  twin-brother,  was,  in  the  words  of  a 
friendly  student  of  Hobbes'  life  and  work,  "  the  com- 
panion that  never  left  him  through  life"  —  a  veritable 
Siamese  twin. 

Let  us  stop  here  a  moment  on  this  point,  and  revert  to 
the  Virgilian  motto  prefixed  (I  know  not  whether  by 
Hobbes  or  by  his  editor)  to  the  metrical  autobiography 
from  which  I  began  by  quoting.  It  will  enable  me  at 
once  and  at  the  outset  to  furnish  the  reader  with  the 
double  guide  to  the  interpretation  of  nearly  everything  in 
the  recorded  thought  and  actions  of  the  thinker  whom  we 
have  now  before  us.  The  motto  consists  of  lines  well 
known : 

"  Felix  qui  potuit  rerum  cognoscere  causas, 
Atque  metus  omnes  et  inexorabile  Fatum 
Subjecit  pedibus,  strepitumque  Acherontis  avari." 

(Happy  he  who  has  been  able  to  know  the  causes  of 
things,  and  has  cast  beneath  his  feet  all  fears,  and  inex- 
orable Fate,  and  the  din  of  greedy  Acheron.)  You  have 
here  the  moving  principle  of  Hobbes'  abstract  thought, 
thirst  for  knowledge  of  causes,  and,  by  sufficiently  direct 
implication,  that  which  the  elder  Disraeli  (Quarrels  of 
Authors)  terms  Hobbes'  "solitary  principle  of  action  .  .  . 
self-preservation  at  any  price":  not  so  much  the  casting 
under  his  feet,  as  the  eluding,  as  much  and  as  long  as 
possible,  of  "  all  fears"  and  of  "inexorable  Fate,"  and 
especially  of  the  embrace  of  muttering,  "  greedy  Acheron." 
And  in  this,  compared  with  the  usual  measure  of  human 
life,  it  must  be  conceded  that  he  managed  to  succeed 
reasonably  well.     For  Hobbes  had  enjoyed  the  green  fields 


THOMAS  HOBBES.  143 

of  earth  this  side  the  Acheron  ninety-one  years,  before  the 
unwelcome  but  irrevocable  order  came  to  cross  that  river 
and  explore  whether  beyond  its  din  and  darkness  there 
might  not  be  other  and  greener,  namely,  Elysian,  fields  to 
enjoy.  But  let  us  return  to  our  narrative,  taking,  for  the 
main  facts,  Hobbes  himself  for  our  guide. 

His  father  was  a  minister  of  the  Church  of  England, 
who  gave  to  his  son,  at  baptism,  his  own  name.  What 
became  of  the  gentle,  timorous  mother,  how  long  she  was 
spared  to  be  to  him  strength  in  his  early  weakness,  to 
inflict  wounds  of  correction  and  to  bind  up  wounds  of 
accident;  or  what  share  his  father  may  have  had  in  the 
history  of  his  youthful  life,  as  monitor,  companion,  or 
instructor;  or  whether,  indeed,  he  ever  was  a  real  boy, 
with  boy's  delights  and  fancies,  Hobbes  does  not  inform 
us.  What  he  remembers  at  the  age  of  eighty-four  is,  tliat 
when  he  was  four  years  old  he  learned  to  "  talk,  and  read, 
and  count,  and  also,  though  indifferently,  to  form  let- 
ters." Note  well,  in  this  enumeration  of  early  acquire- 
ments, the  mention  of  counting  {numerare),  for,  I  doubt 
not,  to  Hobbes'  mind  it  was  the  most  important  and  in- 
teresting of  all.  For  to  him  it  would  mark  the  real 
beginning  of  his  life  as  a  proper  human  being.  The  old 
logic  had  said,  somewhat  indefinitely,  but  more  compre- 
hensively, Man  is  a  rational  animal.  Hobbes,  defining 
less  comprehensively,  but  more  explicitly,  said,  in  effect, 
Man  is  a  reasoning,  that  is,  a  calculating,  computing  ani- 
mal;  for  all  reasoning  (he  maintained)  is  computation, 
i.e.  a  variety  either  of  addition  or  of  subtraction.  And 
Hobbes  was  preeminently  just  such  an  animal.  More- 
over reasoning  is,  in  the  view  of  Hobbes,  an  addition  or 
subtraction  of  ivords,  as  symbols  of  conceptions.     When, 


144  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

therefore,  the  little  Hobbes  had  begun  to  be  able  to  speak, 
read,  and  write  words,  as  well  as  to  count,  he  was,  obvi- 
ously, at  least  a  rudimentary  reasoner.  Then  he  was 
beginning  to  live.  It  was  of  little  consequence  that  he 
learned  to  love  and  honor  his  parents  and  to  fear  God,  if 
indeed  he  did  learn  all  this.  It  mattered  not  that  a  spirit 
—  a  better  Psyche  —  within  him,  making  him  perhaps 
then  nearer  heaven  than  ever  afterward,  without  compu- 
tative  ratiocination  miglit  catch  glimpses  and  so  report 
direct  evidence  of  a  life  and  existence  nobler  than  any 
known  to  flesh  and  blood.  All  this  might  be  merely  idle 
fancy.  The  main  and  sure  thing  was  to  be  a  calculating, 
computing,  ratiocinative  machine.  This  at  the  age  of 
four  years  Hobbes  expressly  began  to  be.  This  therefore, 
and  this  only,  it  was  important  for  him  in  his  truthful 
autobiography  to  note,  as  being,  to  him,  the  first  decisive 
step  in  living. 

But  Hobbes  had  enough  of  the  humanistic  spirit  of 
the  dying — or  maturing — Renaissance  to  delight  in  clas- 
sical studies.  These  occupied  through  life  much  of  his 
time,  and  perhaps  more  than  anything  else  were  the  ob- 
ject of  his  sincere  love.  He  finds  it  therefore  (and  rea- 
sonably) of  interest  to  note  next,  that  at  the  age  of  six 
he  was  already  immersed  in  the  rudiments  of  Greek  and 
Latin  (or  these  in  him).  Verily,  that  ch'rical  father  of 
his  —  perhaps,  as  in  Bacon's  case,  his  mother,  too  —  was 
a  true  child  of  tlie  literary  and  intellectual  regeneration. 
How  often  docs  it  happen,  I  wonder  (or  does  it  ever  hap- 
pen ?),  in  free  America — where  freedom,  I  fear,  means  too 
often  anything  but  intellectual  liberation  from  a  fancied 
conceit  of  complete  native  self-sufficiency  —  that  youth  are 
thus  early  directed  into  the  way  of  genuinely  humane  cult- 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  145 

lire?  How  many  among  us,  who  repute  ourselves  liberally 
educated,  have  not  been  painfully  conscious  that,  at  the 
age  of  twenty-five  or  thirty,  or  even  later,  we  were  still 
painfully  limping  over  ways  in  which,  not  simply  the  en- 
thusiasts of  learning  in  an  earlier  time,  but  the  men  who, 
in  Europe,  as  thinkers  and  statesmen,  now  lead  our  civ- 
ilization (in  England  the  Mills  and  Gladstones,  for  ex- 
ample), and  not  only  they,  but  thousands  of  their  less 
distinguished,  but  classically  educated,  contemporaries, 
were  already  m  early  youth  vigorous  runners  ?  We 
have  yet  to  learn,  as  a  nation,  not  to  waste  our  time  in 
disputing  about  the  value  of  different  styles  of  education, 
or  indeed  of  any  sound  mental  discipline  whatever,  but 
to  go  ahead  and  educate  ourselves  by  early,  persistent, 
thorough  and  never-ceasing  training.  We  may  claim  that 
our  national  temperament  is  such  that  early  and  persever- 
ing mental  application  is  dangerous  for  us.  But  patient 
thought  and  study  are  not  half  so  perilous  for  our  nerves 
and  brains  as  the  passionate  fret  and  worry  incident  to 
the  strife  for  the  possession  of  the  thousand  now  alleged 
necessaries  of  decent  existence  —  comforts,  luxuries, 
knick-knacks,  places  of  honor,  means  of  showing  off, 
the  not  desiring  which  we  are  accustomed  to  regard  as 
denoting  lack  of  honorable  ambition,  or  ignorance  of 
that  which  makes  life  worth  living.  Genuinely  patient 
thought  and  study  are  as  much  a  sedative  as  an  excitant; 
for  they  bring  the  repose  of  strength.  And  not  simply 
this.  Both  classical  and  scientific  studies  are  the  mind's 
best  recreation.  Such  Hobbes  seems  to  have  found  the 
former,  for  we  are  told  that  before  he  left  the  school  in 
which  he  was  fitted  for  Oxford,  his  proficiency  as  a 
scholar  had  enabled  him,  for  a  ''literary  pastime,"  "ele- 
7 


146  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

gantly  to  express  the  Medea  of  Euripides  in  Latin  verses 
of  the  same  metre  as  the  original." 

At  the  age  of  fourteen  Hobbes  was  sent  to  Oxford,  where 
he  was  received  into  Magdalen  Hall  and  put  in  the  lowest 
class  in  logic.  Here,  as  Hobbes  rather  amusingly  describes, 
he  attended  sedulously  upon  the  prelector's  readings,  who 
proceeded  with  gravity  to  repeat  to  his  beardless  hearers 
the  names  of  the  various  syllogistic  modes,  declaring 
which  belonged,  severally,  to  the  different  figures,  and 
which  of  them  could  be  legitimately  used.  "  Which 
things,"  says  Hobbes, "  I  learned,  though  slowly,  and  then 
cast  off,  and  was  permitted  to  prove  some  things  accord- 
ing to  my  own  mode."  Obviously  Hobbes  was  like  many 
another  of  his  age  —  Bacon,  Descartes,  Gussendi,  Locke  — 
in  his  inability  to  perceive  the  whole  value  and  beauty  of 
Barbara,  celarent,  darii,  ferio,  harahjpton ;  and  the  stu- 
dent of  his  works  finds  that  with  him,  as  with  them,  a 
thing  of  capital  importance  is  to  endeavor  to  simplify 
logical  method,  to  assimilate  it  to  practice,  and  especially 
to  cause  the  truth  to  be  duly  felt,  that  the  knowledge  of 
its  formal  precepts,  being  derived  from  analysis  of  the  best 
practice,  does  not  consciously  precede  and  mechanically 
determine  practice,  but  the  rather  exists  only  for  its  occa- 
sional correction  and  guidance,  and  cannot  lawfully  be 
severed  from  it.  Next  Hobbes  was  advanced  to  the  class 
in  physics,  where  his  master  seems  at  once  to  have  treated 
him  to  such  high  philosophical  generalities  as  that  all 
things  consist  of  matter  and  form,  as  parts,  to  the  old, 
crude,  early  Greek  doctrine  of  effluent  images  as  causes 
of  our  visual  and  auditory  sensations,  and  to  alchemistic 
sympathies  and  antipathies  as  accounting  for  numerous 
physical  eflfects ;  —  to  these  and,  says  Hobbes,  to  "  many 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  147 

other  such  things  above  my  comprehension."  But  Hobbes, 
who,  with  so  many  men  of  his  age,  shared  Descartes'  pas- 
sion for  perfectly,  mathematically,  clear  and  distinct  ideas, 
and  who,  notwithstanding  that  he  was  destined  in  his 
philosophy  to  assign  so  important  a  place  to  words,  could 
never  be  dazzled,  much  less  contented,  with  words  to 
which  he  could  attach  no  definite,  palpable,  calculable 
signification,  was  not  the  man  to  take,  or  pretend  to  take, 
satisfiiction  or  even  interest  in  things  which  he  doubtless 
already  considered  as  not  simply  above  his  comprehension, 
but  probably  above  the  comprehension  of  any  one,  because 
(in  his  view)  all  false  and  absurd.  Whence  he  turned  to 
things  more  agreeable.  He  read  anew  the  books  he  had 
once  studied  but  not  learned.  He  took  pleasure  in  look- 
ing at  his  old  geographical  and  astronomical  maps  and 
seeking  to  realize  to  mind  and  imagination  all  that  they 
represented. 

Leaving  Oxford,  after  a  six  years'  residence  there,  in 
1608,  with  the  first  degree  (Bachelor  of  Arts),  and  fortified 
with  a  commendatory  letter  from  the  rector  of  Magdalen 
Hall,  he  was  in  the  same  year  received  into  the  family  of 
William  Cavendish,  Baron  of  Hardwick,  and  subsequently 
Earl  of  Devonshire,  as  tutor  for  his  eldest  son.  Connected 
with  this  family  he  remained  not  more  (nay,  less)  on  a 
footing  of  service  than  of  friendship  during  the  greater 
portion  of  his  life.  The  first  period  of  his  connection 
with  the  house  lasted  twenty  years,  and  was,  according  to 
Hobbes'  own  statement,  by  far  the  happiest  of  his  life. 
It  furnished  him  abundant  leisure  and  means  (in  the  form 
of  books)  for  the  prosecution  of  his  studies.  These  he 
directed  especially  to  ancient  literature,  particularly  his- 
tory and  poetry.     Of  the  historians,  Thucydides  pleased 


148  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

him  most,  showing  him  "  how  inept  a  form  of  government 
is  Democracy,  and  how  much  wiser  is  one  man  than  a 
crowd  of  men."  The  political  troubles,  which  were  des- 
tined to  terminate  in  disaster  for  Charles  I  and  royalty, 
were  already  brewing,  and  Ilobbes,  as  a  warning  to  his 
countrymen,  translated  the  History  of  Thucydides  into 
English,  and  in  the  year  1G28  made,  with  this  transla- 
tion, his  ddbut  as  an  author.  In  the  meantime  he  had 
entered  into  near  relations  with  English  men  of  thought, 
among  others  Francis  Bacon,  who  is  said  to  have  secured 
the  aid  of  Hobbes  for  the  translation  of  some  of  his  works 
into  Latin.  It  were  interesting  to  know  precisely  what  im- 
pression Bacon  made  upon  Hobbes.  That  the  latter  must 
have  been  sympathetically  affected  by  the  general  spirit 
and  direction  of  Bacon's  thought,  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion. It  is  true  (and  the  fact  is  curiously  symptomatic 
of  the  literary  manners  of  the  time,  —  it  need  not  neces- 
sarily be  attributed  to  what  Disraeli  terms  Hobbes' 
"mighty  egotism")  that  Hobbes  mentions  only  once  in 
his  works  "Lord  Chancellor  Bacon."  It  is  also  true  that 
that  side  of  scientific  method  for  which  Hobbes  had  the 
most  marked  predilection  Avas  the  deductive,  rather  than 
the  inductive,  of  which  he  makes  only  extremely  rare  and 
casual  mention.  But  this  has  not  hindered  the  world 
from  perceiving  the  intellectual  kinship  of  Bacon  and 
Hobbes,  and  that  the  work  of  the  latter  was  really  to  take 
up,  and  in  some  of  its  most  important  applications  to 
expound,  the  parable  of  the  former.  Not  to  insist  upon 
the  keen  relish  which  Hobbes  felt  for  physical  inquiries, 
and  upon  his  thoroughly  utilitarian  conception  of  phil-: 
osophy  as  existing  "  for  the  commodity  of  human  life"—. 
points  of  obvious  but  no  less  significant  and  fundamental 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  149 

resemblance  to  Bacon  —  the  decisive  consideration  is  that 
each  of  them  makes  sense,  —  or  what  is  now  termed  feel- 
ing, in  order  the  better  to  indicate  the  inclusion,  in  the 
principle,  not  only  of  so-called  sensible  perceptions  of 
objects,  but  also  of  internal  perceptions  of  conscious 
states,  —  the  source  of  the  whole  material  of  philosophical 
knowledge.  Philosophy  is  thus  identified  with  what  is 
now  known  as  (in  the  Avidest  sense)  the  physical  science 
of  phenomena.  Bacon  had  conceived  that  the  method  of 
physical  science  was  applicable  to  the  moral. and  political 
sciences,  as  indeed  it  is,  if  you  consider  the  facts,  about 
which  these  sciences  are  concerned,  only  on  their  phenom- 
enal, not  on  their  real,  or  ontological  {i.e.  their  ideal,  and 
essential)  side.  Hobbes  resolutely  makes  this  application. 
Just  as,  germinantly  and  typically  in  the  speculations  of 
Bacon,  more  manifestly  in  the  reasonings  and  investiga- 
tions of  such  pioneers  in  science,  contemporary  with  and 
personally  known  to  Hobbes,  as  Galileo,  and  expressly  in 
the  mechanical  physics  of  Descartes  (with  whose  specula- 
tions, also,  he  became  fully  acquainted),  the  truth  was 
coming  into  new  and  more  vivid  light,  that  all  physical 
phenomena  are  modes  of  motion,  so  Hobbes,  extending 
the  generalization,  declared  that  all  mental  phenomena 
were  also  such  modes ;  and  going  on  to  treat  of  the  facts 
of  man's  life  in  morality  and  society,  he  was  led  naturally 
to  regard  them  purely  as  instances  of  a  blindly  mechan- 
ical play  of  sensation  and  passion — with  what  result  we 
shall  hereafter  see.  And  note,  I  pray,  again,  and  thought- 
fully, the  fact  incidentally  implied  in  a  previous  obser- 
vation, that  the  method  of  deduction,  emphasized  and 
employed  by  Hobbes,  is,  if  you  consider  the  whole  and 
complete  method,  whether  of  physical  science  or  of  meta- 


150  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

physical  philosophy,  not  contradictory  but  complementary 
to  induction.  Narrowness  and  error  are  found  only  when 
the  one  is  insisted  upon  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other. 

I  One  of  Bacon's  most  serious  deficiencies  was,  by  universal 
admission,  his  relative  failure  to  perceive  the  specifically 
scientific  value  and  necessity  of  deduction,  side  by  side 
with  induction.  And  this  failure  has  been  seen  to  stand 
in  direct  connection  with  his  unfamiliarity  with  the 
mathematical  sciences,  which  furnish  the  model  and  in- 
dispensable organon  of  the  natural  sciences.  Now,  con- 
sidering the  history  of  English  thought  as  a  whole,  we 
can  see  that  Hobbes,  while  floating  in  the  same  general 
stream  of  intellectual  tendency,  and  hence  in  sympathy, 
with  Bacon,  not  so  much  contradicted,  but  rather  supple- 
mented. Bacon,  by  his  insistance  on  deduction.  And  that 
which  led  him  to  see  more  clearly  its  nature  and  value 
was  precisely  the  special  acquaintance  witii  mathematics, 
especially  geometry,  which  Hobbes  first  formed,  when 
already  past  forty  years  of  age,  in  Paris. 

Of  Hobbes'  repeated  visits  to  the  continent,  the  first 
had  been  made  in  the  year  IGIO,  when,  in  the  company 
of  his  pupil,  he  travelled  in  France,  Germany  and  Italy. 
The  former  having  died  in  1G28.  and  his  fatlier,  the  Earl 
of  Devonshire,  two  years  earlier,  Hobbes,  in  the  same  or 
the  following  year,  repaired  to  Paris,  but  soon  returned, 
to  accompany  a  young  nobleman  of  the  name  of  Clifton 
to  the  continent.  It  was  during  this  journey  that  Ilobhes, 
whose  studies  had  hitherto  been  so  largely  devoted  to 
classical  literature  and  to  history,  and  whose  career  as  an 
original  writer,  however  active  his  thinking  may  have 
been,  had  not  yet  begun,  applied  himself,  whether  in  the 
first  instance  through  accident  or  intention,  to  the  study 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  151 

of  the  elements  of  Euclid.  From  this  time  he  was,  at 
least  by  predilection,  if  not  altogether  in  reality,  nothing 
if  not  a  geometrician.  Henceforth  he  honored  in  geom- 
etry "the  only  science  that  it  hath  pleased  God  hitherto 
to  bestow  on  mankind."  It  was,  for  him,  the  "mother  of 
all  natural  science,"  and  the  source  —  through  the  arts 
which  depend  upon  it  —  of  "whatsoever  assistance  doth 
accrue  to  the  life  of  man."  All  iliat  was  due  to  geometry, 
through  which  civilized  Europeans  differed  from  the 
savages  of  America.  The  writings  of  geometricians  had 
increased  science,  while  those  of  ethical  philosophers  had 
only  served  to  multiply  words,  and  this  because  geometry 
was  "subservient  to  nothing  but  truth."  Mathematics, 
especially  geometry,  was  in  Hobbes'  view  nothing  but 
logic,  the  true  method  of  reasoning,  put  in  practice,  and 
the  best  way  to  learn  logic  was  to  study  the  demonstra- 
tions of  the  mathematicians.  Henceforth  Hobbes  was  in 
possession  of  a  method  for  the  exposition  and  demonstra- 
tion of  the  principles  he  desired  to  propagate.  He  would 
appeal  to  common  experience  for  simple  principles  of 
axiomatic  validity,  and  deduce  from  them,  with  the  abso- 
lute necessity  of  a  fate-directed  mechanism  of  metliod, 
conclusions  which,  because  resting  on  unquestioned  dem- 
onstration, tliere  could  be  no  motive  for  resisting,  and  no 
possibility  of  resisting.  In  this  fascination  with  geomet- 
rical method  the  student  of  the  history  of  thought  will 
recognize  at  once  the  relationship  of  Hobbes  to  his  age, 
and  especially  to  such  contemporaries,  of  the  first  magni- 
tude in  the  history  of  philosophy,  as  Descartes  and  Spin- 
oza. It  was  for  these  men,  proceeding  in  their  reasonings 
from  such  widely  different  starting-points,  yet  having  each 
(I  class  here  Descartes  and  Spinoza  as  one)  such  absolute 


152  BRITISH   TIIOUGUT   AND   THINKERS. 

confidence  in  the  applicability  of  mathematical  method 
to  the  treatment  of  philosophical  problems,  to  show  to  us 
who  come  after  them,  by  the  results  of  their  endeavors, 
that  their  methodological  presupposition  is  false.  Phi- 
losophy in  their  hands  gives  place  to  an  unduly  extended 
generalization  of  physical  science.  The  questions  of  phi- 
losophy proper,  which  are  questions  of  life,  are  either 
misconceived  or  practically  suppressed ;  they  are  not  an- 
swered. 

Of  even  greater  consequence,  for  its  influence  upon  the 
final  crystallization  of  Hobbes'  own  views,  was  his  fourth 
residence  on  the  continent  in  the  years  1C34-1G37.  He 
was  accompanied  by  a  ward  in  the  person  of  the  young 
heir  of  the  house  of  Cavendish,  which  he  had  already  so 
long  served.  They  travelled  together  through  France, 
Savoy  and  Italy.  Hobbes  has  given  an  interesting  though 
compressed  account  of  his  mental  history  during  this 
journey.  Perpetually,  he  says,  whether  traveling  by  water, 
by  coach,  or  on  horseback,  liis  thoughts  were  occupied  with 
the  nature  of  things.  And  it  seemed  to  him  that  in  the 
whole  universe  but  one  thing  was  real  (vera),  though  dis- 
guised in  various  ways:  one  tiling,  but  whicli  was  the 
basis  of  things  which  we  falsely  suppose  to  possess  an 
independent  nature  and  existence;  —  for  the  distinctions 
which  we  believe  to  exist  among  things  are,  ontologic- 
ally  considered,  mere  "ideas  {phaniasiw),  the  progeny  of 
our  brains,  and  nothing  else";  —  intrinsically,  there  is 
nothing  in  things  but  motion  {Partibus  internis  nil  nisi 
mollis  inest).  Add  to  motion  "configuration"  and  you 
have  the  exact  description  of  the  world  as  it  exists  to- 
day in  the  view  of  physical  science.  Doubtless  the  de- 
velopment of  this  thought  was  helped  on  in  the  mind 


THOMAS    HOBBES.  153 

of  Hobbes  by  the  discussions  concerning  motion  and  its 
laws  which  were  everywhere  absorbing  the  attention  of 
thoughtful  minds  and  were  nowhere  more  animated  than 
in  Italy,  where  the  recent  persecution  of  Galileo  had  lent 
to  them  a  tragic  interest.  It  was  the  good  fortune  of  our 
hero  to  meet  Galileo  at  Pisa,  who  received  him  kindly  and 
conversed  with  him  at  length,  and  repeatedly,  respecting 
his  discoveries.  Returning  to  Paris,  Hobbes  communi- 
cated to  Mersenne,  the  mild  priest  and  learned  scholar 
who  had  been  able  to  secure  the  confidence  of  minds  so 
opposed  as  Descartes  and  Gassendi,  the  fruits  of  his  med- 
itations. Mersenne  listened  kindly,  and  in  many  things 
commended.  "  From  that  time,"  says  Hobbes,  "  I,  too, 
was  numbered  among  the  philosophers." 

Returning  to  England  in  the  year  1637,  Hobbes,  now 
but  little  short  of  fifty  years  old,  set  about  developing 
and  "  connecting  his  ideas  "  with  a  view  to  their  system- 
atic exposition.  But  even  the  "execrable  calamity"  of 
civil  war  stood  threatening  at  the  doors,  or  rather  in  the 
heart,  of  the  nation.  Hobbes  viewed  the  spectacle  with 
constitutional  horror  {Horreo  speciajis,  he  says).  Besides, 
he  believed  his  own  life  to  have  been  endangered  through 
the  publication  and  private  circulation  of  a  pamphlet 
containing  views  respecting  the  nature  of  civil  authority, 
which  were  far  from  being  adapted  to  the  then  temper  of 
the  English  people.  Accordingly,  he  retired  again  to  the 
capital  of  France,  his  "  loved  Lutetia,"  where  he  remained, 
mostly,  during  the  following  eleven  years,  diligently  en- 
gaged in  the  composition  and  publication  of  his  most 
important  works.  Of  these  the  first,  "  Philosophical  Ele- 
ments of  a  True  Citizen  "  (generally  cited,  from  the  last 
two  words  of  the  Latin  title,  as  the  De  Cive)  was  pub- 


154  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

lished,  in  a  small  edition,  in  1642.  In  it  he  set  forth, 
tersely,  vigorously,  boldly,  the  outlines  of  his  celebrated 
—  and  notorious  —  theory  of  the  state.  In  it  he  sought 
to  deduce  from  an  hypothesis  concerning  the  nature  of 
man  without  society  and  government,  the  necessity  of  a 
civil  polity  and  its  necessary  and  essential  nature.  The 
deduction  proceeds,  oddly  enough,  from  the  assumption 
that  man  is  naturally  not  a  social  being,  to  the  conclusion 
that  he  must  necessarily  live  in  society ! 

Man  is,  according  to  Hobbes,  not  what  the  Greeks 
termed  him  and  what  he  everywhere  practically  shows  him- 
self to  be,  namely,  a  ^d>(»  Tzohzuo.' ;  he  is  not  "a  creature 
born  fit  for  society."  If,  he  assures  us,  we  "  shall  more  nar- 
rowly look  into  the  causes  for  which  men  come  together, 
and  delight  in  each  other's  company,  [we]  shall  easily  find 
that  this  happens  not  because  naturally  it  could  happen 
no  otherwise,  but  by  accident" — which  is  tantamount  to 
saying  that  it  comes  about  by  brute  or  blindly  mechanical 
necessity.  Hobbes  regards  men  in  a  state  of  nature  as  so 
many  individual  depositaries  of  a  certain  amount  of  power, 
in  the  exercise  of  which  they  are  guided  solely  by  passion. 
Of  passions,  the  strongest  and  hence  dominant  one  is  the 
passion  for  self-preservation,  which  is  man's  chief  natural 
good,  accompanied  by  the  correlative  fear  of  destruction, 
which  is  man's  greatest  natural  evil. 

All  men  are  by  nature  equal.  For  each  is  able  to  in- 
flict upon  the  other  the  greatest  of  evils,  namely,  death. 
Says  Hobbes,  making  a  curious  application  of  his  beloved 
mathematical  style  of  reasoning,  "They  are  equals  who 
can  do  equal  things  the  one  against  the  other;  but  they 
who  can  do  the  greatest  things,  namely,  kill,  can  do  equal 
things.    All  men  therefore  among  themselves  are  by  na- 


THOMAS    HOBBES.  155 

ture  equal;  the  inequality  we  now  discern  hath  its  spring 
from  the  civil  law." 

All  men  have  by  nature  an  equal  right  to  all  things. 
As  a  consequence,  each  man  is  fully  authorized  to  do 
whatsoever  will  enable  him,  as  far  as  possible,  to  assert 
this  right.  In  the  assertion  of  it  he  will  justly  be  guided 
by  his  sense  of  his  own  advantage.  "In  the  state  of  na- 
ture," affirms  Hobbes,  "  to  have  all,  and  to  do  all,  is  law- 
ful for  all.  .  .  .  From  whence  we  understand  likewise, 
that  in  the  state  of  nature  profit  is  the  measure  of  right." 

In  view  of  this  state  of  things,  and  the  circumstance 
that,  whether  from  vain-glory  and  other  selfish  passions, 
or  from  the  necessity  of  self-defense,  all  men  are  natu- 
rally inclined  to  hurt  each  other,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
natural  state  of  mankind  must  be,  as  Hobbes  terms  it, 
"a  war  of  all  men  against  all  men."  And  from  the  same 
principles  above  mentioned  it  follows  with  equal  clear- 
ness that  if  any  one  man  can  succeed  in  bringing  all 
others  under  his  power,  he  has  a  right  to  assert  and  main- 
tain this  power.  In  Hobbes'  words,  "A  sure  and  irre- 
sistible power  confers  the  right  of  dominion  and  ruling 
over  those  who  cannot  resist." 

Such  are  the  views  laid  down  by  Hobbes  in  the  first 
chapter  of  the  De  Cive,  and  they  contain  the  perfect  key 
to  his  whole  political  theory.  It  is  easy  for  Hobbes  to 
show  that  this  natural  state  of  universal  war,  described 
by  him,  in  which  every  man's  hand  is  against  every  one, 
is  not  only  not  advantageous,  but  intolerable.  And  it  is 
not  difficult  for  him,  at  whatever  cost  of  paradox,  to 
argue  that,  although  it  is  nature  which  has  made  men 
thus  bellicose,  yet  (in  Hobbes'  own  words)  "the  funda- 
mental law  of  nature  is  to  seek  peace,  where  it  may  be 


166  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

had,  and  where  not,  to  defend  ourselves,"  He  may  go 
further  and  enumerate,  as  lie  does,  nineteen  other  dic- 
tates of  natural  reason,  which  require  the  faithful  per- 
formance of  contracts,  gratitude,  mercy,  humility,  and  so 
forth,  all  binding  as  well  upon  the  superior  as  the  inferior. 
He  may  go  still  further  and  describe  the  origin  of  (some) 
states  in  a  compact  into  which  men  voluntarily  enter.  It 
remains  none  the  less  true  that  the  right  of  him  who 
(by  whatever  train  of  historic  events)  is  once  endowed 
with  supreme  political  power,  remains,  in  the  representa- 
tion of  Hobbes,  tinged  with  those  attributes  of  absolute, 
arbitrary  power,  which  in  the  state  of  nature  belong  to 
him  who  by  brute  force  succeeds  in  bringing  himself  to 
the  top  of  the  heap  and  there  maintaining  himself.  Al- 
though the  ruler  abstractly  ought  to,  and  presumably 
will,  be  guided  by  the  laws  of  natural  reason,  and  make 
the  safety  and  welfare  of  the  citizens,  his  subjects,  his 
only  and  his  intelligent  care,  yet  the  latter,  in  the  matter 
of  obedience,  have  no  business  to  inquire  aloud  or  to  dis- 
cuss whether  he  is  thus  guided  or  not.  Indeed  —  and 
now  prepare  for  another  paradox  —  there  can  never  be 
any  possible  room  for  such  discussion,  for  Hobbes  alleges 
that  it  is  impossible  for  the  ruler,  througli  the  civil  law, 
which  he  alone  dictates,  to  command  aught  contrary  to 
the  law  of  nature.  For  the  first  law  of  nature  is  the  ab- 
solute and  indefeasible  right  of  him  who  is  in  power  to 
command,  without  consulting  his  subjects;  and  this 
right,  in  the  case  of  "political  states"  formed  by  com- 
pact, the  subjects  liave  in  the  beginning,  and  before  they 
knew  how  it  would  be  exercised,  pledged  themselves  to 
respect;  they  are  no  longer  masters  of  their  own  actions; 
it  is  theirs  only  to  obey.    Should  the  sovereign,  in  the 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  157 

exercise  of  the  right  and  obligation,  attributed  by  Hobbes 
to  him,  of  determining  what  religious  doctrines  are  to  be 
professed  and  what  ceremonies  are  to  be  observed,  com- 
mand anything  opposed  to  the  subject's  conscience,  he 
must  yet  defer  outwardly  to  his  monarch's  will,  using  (as 
Kobbes  remarks  in  the  Leviathan)  the  liberty  which  God 
through  Elisha  accorded  under  similar  circumstances  to 
Naaman.  And  in  general,  "the  law  of  nature,"  says 
Hobbes,  "obligeth  in  the  internal  court,  or  that  of  con- 
science, but  not  always  in  the  external  court,  but  then 
only  when  it  may  be  done  with  safety." 

The  sovereign,  in  short,  is  in  Hobbes'  view  the  soul  of 
the  state.  "  He  that  hath  the  supreme  power  is  in  order 
to  the  city,  as  the  human  soul  in  relation  to  the  man." 
The  citizens  are  simply  his  instruments  —  puppets  in  his 
hand.  Only  one  thing,  says  Hobbes,  he  may  not  do,  or 
at  least  may  not  command  me  to  do,  and  that  is  to 
"prejudice  my  body."  He  may  not  order  me  to  take  my 
own  life.  Even  though  honor  may  not  be  preserved,  yet 
physical  life  must  be.  "Death  was  the  one  subject  about 
which  Hobbes  would  not  dispute,"  says  Disraeli. 

This  political  doctrine  is  the  philosophy  of  absolutism, 
and  well  deserves  to  be  placed  side  by  side  with  the  theo- 
logical absolutism  which  we  have  encountered  in  Duns 
Scotus  and  especially  in  William  of  Occam.  I  cannot 
forbear  to  mention,  in  passing,  that  the  best  refutation  of 
the  initial  principles  or  premises  of  both,  in  Hobbes' 
time,  was  furnished  by  the  well-known  Cambridge  Pla- 
tonist,  Ralph  Cudworth. 

The  details  of  philosophical  criticism  on  this  theory  of 
the  origin  and  nature  of  civil  government  must  here  be 
omitted.     Such  criticism  will  discover  in  it,  as  in  nearly 


158  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

everything  human,  botli  reason  and  unreason.  A  more 
obvious  and  facile  line  of  reflection  is  that  which  would 
trace  a  connection  between  Hobbes'  pessimistic  view  of 
human  nature  and  his  own  self-confessed  constitutional 
timidity,  breeding  a  general  distrust  of  mankind.  As  to 
this  point  Disraeli  is  on  the  right  track,  although  he 
doubtless  exaggerates  a  little  when  he  declares  that 
Hobbes  "never  looked  on  human  nature  but  in  terror  or 
in  contempt."  Of  the  importance  of  his  work  Hobbes 
was  fully  convinced.  Just  as,  in  his  view,  "natural  phi- 
losophy" began  its  being  with  Galileo,  so,  he  declared 
subsequently,  "civil,  philosophy"  had  no  existence  in 
literature  before  the  publication  of  De  Give.  It  "pleased 
the  learned,"  he  says  in  his  metrical  autobiography,  "and 
was  altogether  new.  I  was  translated  with  eulogium  into 
various  languages,  and  became  known  by  name  far  and 
wide  among  the  nations."  To  the  extreme  royalist  party, 
at  the  epoch  in  history  when  it  was  publisiied,  a  book 
could  not  but  be  acceptable  which  stoutly  maintained,  on 
alleged  grounds  of  reason  and  scripture,  theses  like  the 
following:  " Monarchy  is  ever  in  the  readiest  capacity  to 
exercise  all  those  acts  which  are  requisite  to  good  govern- 
ment." "A  monarch,  retaining  his  right  of  government, 
cannot  by  any  promise  whatsoever  be  conceived  to  have 
parted  with  his  right  to  the  means  necessary  to  the  exer- 
cise of  his  authority."  "The  best  state  of  a  city  is  that 
where  the  subjects  are  the  ruler's  inheritance."  At  all 
events,  soon  after  the  flight  from  England,  and  arrival  in 
Paris  (in  1046),  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  subse(iuenily 
Charles  H,  Hobbes  was  selected  to  instruct  him  in  mathe- 
matics. 

During  a  serious   illness,   in    the  year  1G46,  Hobbes' 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  159 

friend,  P6re  Mersenne,  called  upon  him  and  undertook  to 
recommend  to  him  the  Eoman  Catholic  church,  as  pos- 
sessed of  power  to  grant  plenary  pardon.  Hobbes  replied 
characteristically,  "  Father,  I  have  examined,  a  long  time 
ago,  all  these  points;  I  should  be  sorry  to  dispute  now; 
you  can  entertain  me  in  a  more  agreeable  manner.  When 
did  you  see  Mr.  Gassendi  ?  "  A  few  days  later  an  English 
clergyman  was  admitted  to  pray  with  Hobbes,  who,  it  is 
related,  "first  stipulated  that  the  prayers  should  be  those 
authorized  by  the  Church  of  England;  and  he  also  re- 
ceived the  sacrament  with  reverence."  Hobbes  remained 
till  his  death  an  inflexible,  if  not  a  devout,  churchman. 
And  here  it  is  right  to  say,  in  reference  to  the  oft-repeated 
charge  of  atheism  brought  against  Hobbes,  that  it  is  as 
unjust  as  such  charges  often  are.  There  can  be  no  ques- 
tion of  the  sincerity  of  Hobbes'  churchmanship,  or  of  his 
Christianity  (which  he  was  wont  to  sum  up  in  the  one 
proposition,  "Jesus  is  the  Christ"),  or  of  his  theism.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  equally  true  that  he  was  not  a  man 
of  fervent  piety,  and  that  the  direct  support  which  he 
believed  religion  could  receive  from  speculation  was  ex- 
tremely sliglit.  It  is  also  certain  that  his  philosophical 
principles,  strictly  and  exclusively  interpreted  and  devel- 
oped, are  inconsistent  with  the  contemplation  of  man  as 
a  moral  being,  and  are,  as  regards  the  recognition  of  God, 
in  the  direct  line,  if  not  of  positive  atheism,  yet  of  theo- 
logical agnosticism. 

In  the  year  1G50  Hobbes  published  in  London  his 
treatise  on  "  Human  Nature,"  and  De  Corpore  Politico, 
and  in  the  following  year  the  "  Leviathan,"  his  opus  mag- 
num, Avhich  develops  in  detail  all  his  philosophical  views, 
and  which  became  at  once,  and  long  continued,  the  object 


160  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

of  numerous  and  violent  attacks,  but  also,  on  the  part  of 
many,  of  enthusiastic  applause.  In  it  the  mechanical 
theory  of  human  nature,  knowledge,  and  action,  is  system- 
atically developed,  and  serves  as  a  basis  for  a  detailed 
exposition  and  reinforcement  of  the  political  doctrine 
previously  expounded  in  the  De  Give.  The  immediate 
effect  of  its  publication  upon  his  personal  fortunes  was, 
according  to  his  own  account,  anything  but  propitious. 
The  royalist  clergy,  and,  still  more,  the  Roman  Catholics, 
could  not  brook  the  absolute  dependence  upon  the  civil 
head  of  the  state  into  which  Hobbes  would  reduce  them. 
He  was,  he  declares,  falsely  accused,  to  the  fugiti-ve  king, 
of  justifying  the  impious  doings  of  Cromwell;  —  though 
not,  certainly,  without  some  color  of  reason  ;  for  had  not 
parliament  wrested  to  itself  actual  power,  and  hence 
(according  to  Hobbes'  principles)  right,  and  wa^  not 
Cromwell  its  representative  and  soon  to  be  its  successor? 
At  all  events  Hobbes  was  met  with  an  order  not  to  ap- 
pear again  in  the  presence  of  the  prince.  Thus  accused, 
and  deprived  of  royal  protection,  he  saw  only  enemies  all 
about  him.  He  bethought  him  of  the  fatal  end  of  Doris- 
laus  and  Ascham,  parliamentary  ambassadors  to  Spain 
and  the  Netherlands.  And  so,  not  sure  of  protection 
even  in  England,  but  knowing  that  in  no  place  he  could 
be  safer,  he  resolved  to  return  to  his  native  country. 

"  FrigTis  erat,  nix  alta,  senex  ego,  ventus  acerbus; 
Vexat  equus  sternax  et  salebrosa  via." 

(It  was  cold,  the  snow  was  deep,  myself  an  old  man,  the 
wind  bitter ;  to  this  was  added  the  vexation  of  a  stum- 
bling horse  and  a  rough  road.)  Arriving  in  London,  he 
sent  in  his  submission  to  the  Council  of  State,  and  then 
retired  to  carry  on  his  studies  in  peace. 


THOMAS  HOBBES.  161 

This  is  Hobbes'  version  of  his  reasons  for  returning  to 
England,  written  late  in  life,  twelve  years  after  the  Eesto- 
ration,  when  he  was  enjoying  the  royal  bounty  of  Charles 
II,  ten  years  after  he  had,  in  deference  to  ecclesiastical  influ- 
ence, partially  recanted  the  doctrines  of  the  Leviathan, 
and  when,  in  the  language  of  a  Westminster  reviewer,  he 
was  loudly  professing  a  "new  ultra-conservatism  and 
ostentatious  loyalty,  the  response  of  his  fears  to  the  exi- 
gencies of  his  situation."  I  will  not  now  discuss  the 
question  to  what  extent  Hobbes'  account  is  truthful.  I 
call  attention  to  a  curious  assertion  of  his  enemies.  To 
the  "  Leviathan  "  was  prefixed  a  frontispiece  representing, 
not  the  sea-monster  of  that  name  mentioned  in  the  Book 
of  Job,  but  Hobbes'  Leviathan,  the  Commonwealth,  "which 
is  but  an  artificial  man,"  identified  with  the  monarch  or 
supreme  ruler.  The  figure  is  that  of  a  crowned  giant, 
whose  form  towers  above  mountains  and  valleys,  plains 
and  cities,  "  entirely  made  up  of  little  men  from  all  the 
classes  of  society,  bearing  in  the  right  hand  the  sword, 
and  in  the  left  the  crosier."  Of  this  figure  it  was  asserted 
(though  really,  as  far  as  I  can  learn,  without  sufficient 
apparent  reason)  that  in  the  first  edition  the  features  were 
those  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  while  in  later  editions  they 
were  changed  to  be  the  likeness  of  Charles  II.  Hobbes 
desired  the  doctrines  of  his  book —  which,  in  spite  of  all 
protestations  to  the  contrary,  he  could  not  but  regard  as 
marking  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  political  philosophy  — 
to  be  taught  at  the  universities.  On  the  contrary,  it  and 
himself  were  treated  with  obloquy.  Let  me  cite  a  passage 
from  Disraeli,  showing,  by  a  specimen,  what  treatment 
Hobbes  had  to  endure  from  his  own  university  of  Oxford  : 
"  The  ungenerous  attack  of  Bishop  Fell,  who,  in  the  Latin 


162  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

translation  of  "Wood's  *  History  of  the  University  of  Ox- 
ford,' had  converted  eulogium  into  the  most  virulent  abuse, 
.  .  .  was  only  an  arrow  snatched  from  a  quiver  which  was 
every  day  emptying  itself  on  the  devoted  head  of  our 
ambiguous  philosopher.  Fell  only  vindicated  himself  by 
a  fresh  invective  on  *  the  most  vain  and  waspish  animal  of 
Malmesbury,'  and  Hobbes  was  too  frightened  to  reply. 
This,"  adds  Disraeli,  "  was  the  Fell  whom  it  was  so  diffi- 
cult to  assign  a  reason  for  not  liking : 

I  don't  like  thee,  Dr.  Fell, 
The  reason  why  I  cannot  tell, 
But  I  don't  like  thee,  Dr.  Fell." 

The  Leviathan  received  the  honor  of  being  condemned 
by  act  of  parliament  in  the  year  1666. 

The  last  twenty  years  or  so  of  Hobbes'  life  were  al- 
most constantly  filled  up  with  "wars" — "quarrels  of  au- 
thors"—  in  which  he  was  not  less  pleased  than  harassed; 
for  he  delighted  to  deliver  blows,  when  it  could  be  done 
without  too  imminent  danger  to  himself.  In  allusion  to 
his  roaring  pugnacity  Charles  II  is  reported  to  have  re- 
marked one  day,  when  he  saw  Hobbes  approaching,  "Here 
comes  the  bear  to  be  baited."  Hobbes,  namely,  in  his 
declining  years,  when  his  philosophical  principles  had 
been  fairly  launched  into  the  stream  of  tiic  world's 
thoughts,  was  greatly  busied  with  physical  and,  especially, 
mathematical  questions.  He  turned,  as  he  says,  to  his 
"loved  mathematics"  {amata  mathemata).  Whatever  he 
handled,  he  was  not  the  man  to  confess  himself  second 
to  any  other.  Accordingly,  in  addition  to  the  aspersions 
of  ecclesiastical  and  political  enemies,  he  became  involved 
in  conflict,  on  physical  questions,  with  the  chemist  Boyle 


THOMAS  HOBBES.  163 

and  the  Royal  Society,  and  on  mathematical  questions 
notably  with  Dr.  Wallis,  professor  at  Oxford.  It  was  this 
Dr.  Wallis  who  victoriously  defended  the  copiousness  and 
capacity  of  the  English  tongue,  by  a  literal  translation  of 
a  French  quatrain  intended  to  illustrate  the  superiority 
of  the  French  language  — 

"When  a  twister  a  twisting  will  twist  him  a  twist,"  etc., 

and  then,  continuing  upon  the  same  theme,  produced  two 
other  equally  marvelous  quantrains ! 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  explain  the  mathematical  prin- 
ciples involved  in  the  "  Peloponnesian  War"  of  twenty 
years — including  occasional  truces  —  between  Hobbes  and 
Dr.  WalHs.  Hobbes  bas  celebrated  it  in  a  few  Latin  lines, 
wliich  recall  Virgil's  yEueid  and  the  story  of  the  contests, 
witbout  which  Rome  could  not  have  been  founded. 
Hobbes  classes  his  enemies  as  "algebrists" — of  whom,  as 
distinguished  from  geometricians,  he  had  a  fervent  hor- 
ror—  and  "theologians";  these  constitute  the '' exercikis 
Wallisianus,''''  or  "army  of  Wallis."  It  is  enough  to  know 
that  he  considers  himself  finally  to  have  routed  the  hos- 
tile host.  "In  a  point  of  time,"  he  says,  "I  scatter,  over- 
throw, put  to  flight,  their  well-nigh  infinite  number." 
The  weapons  used  on  each  side  were  selected  indiscrim- 
inately from  the  armory  of  argument  and  of  objurgation. 
An  amusing  degree  of  irreverence  is  shown  by  all  the  com- 
batants in  the  titles  of  their  printed  missiles.  Hobbes, 
in  the  year  1656,  publishes  "Six  Lessons  to  the  Professors 
of  the  Mathematics"  (Ward  and  Wallis)  at  Oxford.  Wallis 
immediately  returns  the  kind  favor  in  a  "Due  Correction 
for  Mr.  Hobbes,  or  School-discipline  for  not  saying  his 
Lessons  Right."     Neither  disputant  is  deterred    by  any 


164  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AJTD  THINKERS. 

consideration  of  false  courtesy  from  expressing  his  whole 
mind  concerning  the  other.  Hobbes  entitles  his  sixth 
"Lesson,"  "Of  Manners,"  and  prostrates  his  adversaries 
with  the  following  parting  shot  (taking  care  to  italicize 
the  complimentary  epithets  employed  —  italics  were  in 
great  requisition  in  those  days) :  "  So  go  your  ways,  you 
Uncivil  Ecclesiastics,  Inhuman  Divines,  Dedoctors  of  mo- 
rality, Unasinous  Colleagues,  Egregious  pair  of  Issachars, 
most  wretched  Vindices  and  Indices  Academ.iaru>n[llohhes'' 
fire  was  frequently  directed  against  the  universities];  and 
remember  Vespasian's  law,  that  it  is  uncivil  to  give  ill 
language  first,  but  civil  and  lawful  to  return  it."  This 
should  unquestionably  have  been  a  staggerer  to  poor 
Ward  and  Wall  is,  yet  they  rallied  —  strange  to  say!  — 
and  replied  in  this  tone,  accompanied  by  a  frugal,  yet 
sufficient,  expenditure  of  italics:  "It  seems,  Mr.  Hobbes, 
that  you  have  a  mind  to  sat/  your  lesson,  and  that  the 
mathematic  professors  of  Oxford  should  hear  you.  You 
are  too  old  to  learn,  though  you  have  as  much  need  as 
those  that  be  younger,  and  yet  will  think  much  to  be 
whipped.  .  .  .  You  tell  us,  '  though  the  beasts  that  think 
our  railing  to  be  roaring  have  for  a  time  admired  us,  yet 
now  you  have  showed  them  our  ears  they  will  be  less 
affrighted.'  Sir,  those  persons  (the  professors  themselves) 
needed  not  the  sight  of  your  ears,  but  could  tell  by  the 
voice  what  kind  of  person  brayed  in  your  books,"  etc. 
But  I  need  hardly  continue  to  narrate  such  particulars  of 
these  bloodless  encounters.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  how- 
ever fascinated  Hobbes  may  have  been  with  the  mathe- 
matical method  of  demonstration,  yet  he  was  not  a  great 
mathematician. 

Hobbes  dreaded  death,  and  a  long  life  was  measured 


THOMAS  HOBBES.  165 

out  to  him.  Dr.  Wallis  related  of  him  that  he  once  told 
the  countess  of  Devonshire  that  were  the  whole  world  his, 
he  would  give  it  for  one  day  of  life.  In  his  eighty-fourth 
year  he  wrote:  "My  life  is  not  inconsistent  with  my 
writings:  I  teach  justice,  and  I  cultivate  justice."  His 
long  life  had  indeed  been,  in  his  private  relations,  moder- 
ate and  blameless.  In  the  Cavendish  family,  where  fie 
was  perhaps  best  known,  he  had  found  life-long  friends. 
In  their  house  he  died,  before  completing  the  ninety- 
second  year  of  his  life,  December  1679. 

Hobbes  was  not  a  great  philosopher,  and  yet  he  occu- 
pies an  important  place  in  the  history  of  modern,  and 
especially  English,  thought.  His  reduction  of  all  phe- 
nomena, including  those  of  mind  in  their  physical  rela- 
tions, to  modes  of  motion,  was  a  rather  remarkable 
declaration  of  a  scientific  view,  now,  at  least,  universally 
accredited.  In  his  philosophy  of  man,  the  foundation 
of  his  political  theory,  he  was  the  first  one  to  follow  the 
method,  recommended  by  Bacon  and  since  followed  by 
Locke  and  his  followers,  of  purely  empirical  observation, 
analysis,  and  description.  If  in  man  a  distinction  is  to 
be  made  between  man  true  to  himself  {i.e.  man  as  he 
migbt  be  and  ought  to  be,  but  never  is,  except  approxi- 
mately) and  man  as  he  actually  appears — between  man 
the  noumenooi  and  man  the  2>hejiO'ine?ion  —  between  man 
as  a  free,  ideal,  spiritual  agency  apprehended  in  philo- 
sophical self-consciousness,  and  man  as  a  series  of  "men- 
tal states"  whicii,  however  determined,  follow  each  other 
in  time,  or  a  "bundle"  of  "mental  processes"  or  "per- 
ceptions," it  is  to  the  latter  exclusively  that  the  attention 
of  Hobbes  and  his  celebrated  successors  is  directed.  This 
is  identifying  philosophy  with  empirical  psychology,  i.e. 


166  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

substantially  suppressing  philosophy.  The  analogy  with 
Locke  is  strikingly  illustrated  in  the  following  incident 
of  Hobbes'  argument  in  the  De  Cive,  and  it  well  illus- 
trates the  impotently  negative  results  which  must  follow 
the  attempt  to  solve  philosophical  questions  by  the  simple 
application  of  the  genetic-descriptive  method.  Hobbes 
declares  that  man  is  "not  born  fit  for  society"  because 
he  is  born  a  helpless  infant,  incapable  of  knowing  what 
society  is.  In  like  manner,  we  shall  find  Locke  arguing 
that  man  has  no  innate  ideas,  i.e.  that  he  has  not,  inde- 
pendently of  impressions  made  upon  him,  any  mind  or 
mental  nature,  because  children  and  idiots  are  not  con- 
scious of  possessing  anything  of  the  sort!  From  the 
premises  afforded  by  the  exclusive  adoption  of  such  a 
method,  the  denial  of  freedom  and  the  reduction  of  civil 
society  and  government  to  a  result  of  the  brute  necessity 
of  blind  mechanism  (or,  as  Hobbes  terms  it,  "accident") 
follow  as  a  matter  of  course ;  and  perhaps  mankind  owes 
Hobbes  a  debt  of  gratitude  for  having  so  bluntly  and 
honestly  drawn  this  conclusion.  But  every  man  is  a 
man,  after  all,  and  cannot  wholly  divest  himself  of  every- 
thing which  belongs  to  the,  not  phenomenal,  but  real, 
inward,  invisible  essence  of  humanity.  And  so  we  find 
Hobbes,  like  so  many  others  of  his  stripe  of  thought,  still 
occasionally  acknowledging,  in  glaring  contradiction  with 
his  principles  and  disharmony  with  his  system,  an  inner 
/forum  of  conscience,  attesting  freedom  and  accountability 
to  a  divine,  spiritual  power,  of  whicli  the  true  man  is  the 
offspring. 

Such  philosophy  as  that  of  Hobl^es  results  from  a  dis- 
position (historically  grounded  in  and  justified  by  a  dread 


THOMAS   HOBBES.  167 

of  scholastic  subtleties,  from  which  the  light  and  power 
of  reason  had  fled)  to  make  things  easy  ;*  in  other  words, 
(to  treat  as  an  affair  of  sensible  demonstration  an  order  of 
'truths  which  lie  back  of,  and  indeed  shine  through,  but 
are  not  absorbed  in,  sensible  data.  The  knowledge  of  the 
data  is  to  take  the  place  of  the  knowledge  and  the  power 
of  that  which  they,  rightly  considered,  do  but  reveal. 
Physical  science  of  phenomena  is  to  take  the  place  of 
philosophical  science  of  ideal  and  absolute  reality. 

*  "At  Be  Principiifi  alium  tamen  edo  libellum, 
Fecique  ut  posset  clarius  esse  nihil." 


CHAPTER  VII. 
JOHN  LOCKE. 

Bacon,  Hobbes,  Locke  —  such  are  the  names  which 
we  elect  to  consider  among  the  English  thinkers  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century.  Many  others  might  be  selected,  which 
would  furnish  themes  for  interesting  study.  I  might  men- 
tion Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Hobbes'  acquaintance  and 
early  contemporary  —  at  once  scholar  and  cavalier,  diplo- 
mat and  philosopher,  brother  of  George  Herbert,  the 
favorite  religious  poet  (who  died,  by  the  way,  in  the  year 
in  which  John  Locke  was  born),  and  author,  among  other 
things,  of  a  work  on  Truth  {De  Veritate),  defining,  and 
defending  the  sufficiency  of,  natural  religion,  and  pro- 
claiming, somewhat  in  the  way  of  the  later  common-sense 
philosophy  of  the  Scotch  school,  the  innate  possession,  by 
human  reason,  of  certain  notions  or  truths  which  ante- 
date  and  govern  our  experimental  knowledge  and  control 
our  religious  faith  ;  the  same  who  (as  he  himself  relates  in 
his  charming  autobiography,  recently  edited  anew  by  W. 
D.  Howells),  having  finished  his  book,  fell  on  his  knees 
and  implored  God  to  indicate  to  him,  by  a  sign,  whether 
he  should  give  his  work  to  the  world  or  suppress  it; 
whereupon,  though  surrounded  by  the  absolute  calm  of  a 
bright  summer  afternoon,  he  distinctly  heard  a  peculiar 
sound  which  could  proceed,  he  was  sure,  only  from  heaven, 
and  which  he  interpreted  as  an  intimation  that  he  was  to 
proceed,  in  peace,  with  the  publication  of  his  book.    Or 

'168 


JOHN  LOCKE.  169 

I  might  ask  you  to  enter  with  me  upon  the  study  of  Ralph 
Cudworth,  the  greatest  of  the  so-called  "  Cambridge  Pla- 
tonists" — a  late  but  effective  child  of  the  philosophical 
Renaissance — and  see  him  dealing  weighty  blows  at  hydra- 
headed  "Atheism"  with  the  sledge-hammer  of  his  ponder- 
ous learning,  or  what  were,  perhaps,  more  attractive  and 
edifying,  drawing  from  the  Platonic  arsenal  of  argument 
to  reinforce  his  own  well-studied  conviction  of  the  im- 
mutable foundation  of  morality  in  that  divine  reason 
whence  man's  is  borrowed  (as  opposed  to  the  theory  of  the 
foundation  of  morality  in  the  absolute  but  unreasoning 
sovereignty  of  a  divine  will),  and  urging,  with  clear  and 
convincing  insight,  the  evidence  —  destined,  for  whatever 
reason,  to  remain  for  so  long  a  time  unheeded  by,  or  at 
least  unconvincing  to,  so  many  of  his  countrymen  —  that, 
even  in  the  matter  of  that  which  is  termed  sensible  knowl- 
edge, sense  knows  nothing  except  as  it  is  enlightened  by 
implicit,  active  reason.  Let  any  one  open  the  ample  vol- 
umes of  M.  De  Remusat's  History  of  Philosophy  in  Eng- 
land, from  Bacon  to  Locke  (in  French:  Paris,  1875),  and 
he  will  find  an  analysis  and  appreciation  of  the  views  of 
some  fifty  persons  —  a  generous  number,  certainly  —  who 
participated  in  the  philosophical  discussions  of  a  century 
and  a  half.  Remusat's  work  begins,  it  is  interesting  to 
note,  with  one  Sir  Thomas  Wilson,  who,  about  the  middle 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  ventured  upon  the  daring  re- 
formatory innovation  of  writing  and  publishing  treatises 
on  logic  and  rhetoric  in  English ;  for  which  crime,  hap- 
pening subsequently  to  make  a  journey  to  Rome,  he  was 
incarcerated.  Li  the  view  of  the  Liquisitors,  "nothing 
but  heresy,"  remarks  Remusat,  "could  seek  to  make  itself 
intelligible  to  every  body."  Run  through  the  list,  now,  of 
8 


170  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

these  for  the  most  part  imhonored  co-workers  in  the  field 
of  thought,  and  you  find  numbers  who  guard  not  simply 
the  tradition,  but  also,  according  to  the  measure  of  their 
forces,  the  living  well-spring  of  that  truth  which  gives 
vitality  to  all  worthy  human  existence,  to  civilization, 
nay,  more,  to  the  world  itself.  But  you  miss  the  esprit  de 
suite,  the  power  of  sequent  demonstration,  the  single- 
eyed  devotion  to  a  grand,  definite  purpose,  the  energetic, 
comprehensive  grasp  of  principles,  which  have  made  the 
masters  of  philosophic  thought.  "  Excellent  views,"  in- 
deed (to  employ  Remusat's  phrase),  you  find  scattered 
among  many  of  their  writings,  and  I  would  add,  far  more 
than  the  germs  of  truths  which  it  is  the  business  of  phi- 
losophy to-day,  as  in  all  days,  to  guard,  to  develop,  to 
exhibit  in  all  their  many-sided  and  imperial  power.  But 
we  must  admit  with  the  French  historian  (who  is  by  no 
means  unsympathetic)  that  if  elevation  is  not  wanting, 
there  is  a  certain  obvious  defect  of  profundity.  More 
especially  is  there  a  failure  to  separate  philosophy  from 
theology,  and  to  recognize  in  the  former  a  science  at  once 
distinct  from  all  others,  and  universal,  comprehending  all 
others.  Under  these  circumstances  confusion  and  incom- 
pleteness, diflFusion  and  discontinuity,  are  inevitable  de- 
fects, and,  in  particular,  philosophy  is  robbed  of  half  its 
power  through  the  inevitable  suspicion  that  its  dicta  are 
inspired  by  dogmatic  bias,  and  not  by  the  logic  of  living, 
experimental  fact.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  deem  it  no 
discredit  to  the  most  of  the  unrenowned  fifty  on  whom  M. 
de  R^musat  turns  the  light  of  nineteenth-century  intelli- 
gence, that,  in  the  judgment  of  a  recent  English  critic, 
himself  a  duly  baptized  child  of  latter-day,  positive  light 
(who  declares,  for  his  part,  that  "  scientific  psychology 


JOHl!T  LOCKE.  171 

seems  to  require  us  to  renounce  [such]  entities  [as  under- 
standing, reason,  will,  or  the  ego]  and  all  their  works") 
—  that,  I  say,  these  men,  in  this  critic's  judgment,  "  are  for 
the  most  part  in  relation  to  philosophy  not  representative 
English  writers.  Their  notions  and  methods  are  those  of 
the  men  who  do  not  swim  in  the  stream,  but  in  the  eddies 
and  backwater  of  English  thought."  It  matters  not  that 
they  do  not  swim  in  the  stream  of  recent  English  thought, 
if  loyalty  to  truth  and  reason  requires  them  to  resist  or 
keep  out  of  the  current.  It  is  not  necessary  to  go  with 
the  multitude,  or  to  follow  a  popular  guide,  in  order  to  be 
in  the  right. 

What  the  stream  of  English  thought  just  referred  to 
is,  and  whither  it  tends,  is  well  known,  and  I  have  already 
expressed  myself  concerning  it  in  these  pages.  Rather 
than  repeat  myself,  I  will  cite  respecting  this  subject  the 
apposite  and  sympathetic  utterances  of  accomplished 
navigators  in  the  stream  itself,  quoting  from  publications 
of  the  past  year.  I  call  to  the  stand  first  Professor  J. 
Croom  Robertson,  editor  of  Mind,  who  mentions  (in  the 
number  for  January,  1879)  that  "  the  most  character- 
istically English  movement  within  modern  mental  phi- 
losophy" is  "the  continuous  pursuit  of  psychological  in- 
quiry in  the  spirit  of  positive  science."  This  is  empirical 
psychology,  the  analysis  and  classification  of  conscious 
phenomena,  and  is,  strictly  speaking,  no  more  a  portion 
of  mental  or  any  other  ijliilosojjliy  than  is  the  comparative 
psychology  of  the  animal  kingdom  in  general,  or  the 
physiology  of  nervous  action,  or  the  anatomy  of  the 
brain.  It  does  not  properly  touch,  or,  if  made  to  touch, 
it  does  not  solve  any  philosophical  question  concerning 
cause,  substance,  and  purpose.     It  is  an  extremely  inter- 


172  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AKD  THINKERS. 

esting,  and  in  many  ways  practically  useful,  science  of  phe- 
nomena, and  the  knowledge  of  it  is  an  essential  pre- 
requisite of  philosophy  —  yet,  radically  considered,  in  no 
other  sense  than  that  in  which  a  knowledge  of  the  phe- 
nomenal universe  in  general  is  essential.  Rational  psy- 
chology, however,  which  treats  of  the  soul  as  an  entity, 
a  variously  self-manifesting  power,  and  a  purpose  which 
it  is  itself  to  realize,  is  a  portion  of  philosophy.  Empir- 
ical psychology  has  to  do  with  the  phenomena,  or  appear- 
ances; rational  psychology  with  noumena,  or  realities; 
or,  if  there  be  no  psychological  realities,  as  the  critic  be- 
fore cited  supposes,  it  has  at  least  one  function,  that  of 
demonstrating  that  there  are  none.  Note,  further,  that 
just  as  psychology  is  seen  to  have  two  sides  of  the  kind 
just  noted,  so  every  other  philosophical  discipline  is  simi- 
larly double-faced  ;  as,  for  example,  ethics,  aesthetics,  and 
those  derivatives  from  ethics  which  refer  to  questions  of 
education  and  the  life  of  men  in  organized  society.  To 
each  of  these  branches  of  philosophy  there  is  a  corre- 
sponding empirical  side  —  a  body  of  phenomena  which 
may  be  collected,  analyzed,  described,  classified,  in  short, 
subjected  to  treatment  according  to  the  recognized  meth- 
ods of  "positive"  science,  without,  nevertheless,  touching 
upon  the  philosophical  side  of  the  questions  involved. 
And  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  characteristic  bent  of 
f]nglish  thought  in  the  direction  of  empirical  psychology 
has  been  accompanied  by  the  no  less  characteristic  (and 
in  principle  identical)  bent  toward  the  empirical  treat- 
ment of  every  department  of  philosophy,  and  this  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  express  recommendation  of  Francis 
Bacon  himself 

Now  it  is  obvious  that  if  the  empirical  side  of  these 


JOHK   LOCKE.  .  173 

various  lines  of  inquiry  is  pursued  in  the  fancy  that  it  is 
the  only  side,  excluding  consequently  the  investigation  of 
strictly  philosophical  questions  by  the  method  peculiar  to 
philosophy,  and  if  then  the  answer  to  philosophical  ques- 
tions is  sought  among  the  data  and  results  of  empirical 
investigation  —  no  m.atter  how  positive  and  scientihc  — 
only  negative,  not  positive,  answers  can  be  received. 
Since,  by  hypothesis,  the  noumena  are  back  of,  and  not 
absorbed  in,  the  phenomena  in  which  their  power  is  mani- 
fested, since  power  is  not  identical  with  motion,  or  sub- 
stance with  observable  state,  it  is  evident  that  noumenon, 
power,  and  substance  —  all  idealities  —  are  not  to  be 
learned  from  the  exactest  analysis  of  phenomena,  motion, 
and  state  —  all  appearances.  The  end  of  the  misguided 
and  misnamed  philosophy  which  thinks  differently  and 
persists  m  seeking  among  the  latter  alone,  or  principally 
the  solution  of  the  problems  concerning  the  former,  can 
only  be  denial,  scepticism,  or  agnosticism.  To  this  com- 
plexion the  students  of  the  subject  will  find  British 
thought  chronically  arriving.  Its  latest  conclusion, 
which  is  no  new  one,  is  (in  the  words  of  Prof  Huxley, 
Nineteenth  Century,  April  1879)  that  "our  sensations, 
our  pleasures,  our  pains,  and  the  relations  of  these,  make 
up  the  sum  total  of  the  elements  of  positive  {sic),  unques- 
tionable knowledge."  This  statement  is  followed  up  by 
the  favorite  assurance  of  Prof.  Huxley,  that  the  "con- 
clusion" stated  makes  neither  for  materialism  nor  for 
idealism,  being  equally  consistent  with  either;  whence 
the  inference,  as  old  in  English  philosophy  (at  least  in 
part)  as  Locke,  that  we  do  not  and  cannot  unquestion- 
ably know  whether  materialism  or  idealism  is  true,  or 
whether  there  be  any  matter  or  mind  at  all.    So  much 


174  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

for  those  who  love  to  handle  philosophical  phrases. 
Doubtless  a  still  larger  number  of  studious  Englishmen 
have  been  led  by  the  prevailing  absorption  in  physical 
(including  empirico-psychological)  inquiries,  to  adopt  the 
first  of  the  alternatives  mentioned  by  Prof.  Fowler,  in  the 
Introduction  to  his  edition  of  Bacon's  Novum  Organum, 
published  in  1878.  Speaking  of  "ontological  or  metaphys- 
ical questions,"  Prof.  Fowler  says:  "A  deep  sense  of  the 
unprofitable  character  of  these  speculations  has,  indeed, 
been  a  characteristic,  not  of  the  Baconian  philosophy 
only,  but  of  British  philosophy  in  general,  which,  with  a 
healthy  instinct,  has  usually  either  avoided  them  altogether 
or  discussed  them  solely  with  a  view  of  showing  that  they 
lie  outside  the  limits  of  human  knowledge."  Doubtless, 
in  manifold  cases,  the  wisest  thing  for  one  to  do  is  to 
"avoid"  what  one  has  neither  inclination  nor,  possibly, 
ability  to  pursue. 

As  for  Locke,  with  whom  we  have  now  to  concern  our- 
selves, he  was  one  who,  while  practically  settled  in  the 
possession  of  those  ideal  goods  which  philosophy  defends, 
and  which  (in  Hegelian  phrase)  incorporate  themselves 
in  the  institutional  life  of  man  (cliurch,  society,  state), 
devoting  himself  to  the  search  after  the  faculties  of  the 
mind,  initiated  a  movement  which  has  resulted  in  losing 
out  of  siglit  the  essential  truths  of  mind.*  J.  S.  Mill, 
who  so  severely  censured  his  countrymen  for  their  want 
of  philosophy  (see  essay  entitled  "Prof.  Sedgwick's  Dis- 
course"), and  who  yet  went  about,  fruitlessly,  to  supply 

*  "  Tfl  c'tait  IVtat  philosophiqne  des  cBjiritsen  Angletern'.  lorj^qiic  Locke  e*t 
Venn  le*  jwusser  dans  la  voii-  oil  ils  avaicnt  coinmciiccr  a  fain-  qiiflqiie  pas',  en 
les  in!<tniiiiant  a  plus  considerer  Us  faculUs  que  ks  veiiles  de  I'eapi-il  humaUn ''* 
UL-mu!iat  II,  255. 


JOHlf  LOCKE.  175 

the  deficiency  by  clinging  to  that  national  method  which 
had  proved  so  unfruitful,  terms  Locke  the  "unquestioned 
founder  of  the  analytic  philosophy  of  mind,"  and  his 
essay  the  "beginning  and  foundation  of  the  modern,  an- 
alytical psychology."  The  national  school  of  empirical 
psychology,  which,  as  descriptive,  analytical  science  of 
mental  phenomena,  but  not  as  philosophy,  may  be  justly 
vaunted,  fairly  begins  with  Locke. 

But  Locke  was  much  more  than  an  analyst  of  mind 
and  of  the  elements  of  cognition.  Let  us  first  seek  to  see 
him  in  his  life,  and  in  his  manifold,  influential  work. 

He  was  born  in  the  same  year  with  the  Jewish-Dutch 
philosopher  Spinoza,  1632,  on  the  29th  of  August,  at 
Wrington,  in  Somersetshire.  His  father,  whose  name  was 
also  John  Locke,  was  a  country  lawyer.  But  he  lived  in 
troublous  times,  which  tried  men's  souls  and  principles. 
The  son  —  the  subject  of  our  present  study  —  wrote  in 
1660,  "I  no  sooner  perceived  myself  in  the  world  but  I 
found  myself  in  a  storm  which  has  lasted  almost  hither- 
to." It  was  the  storm  of  political  and  religious  dissension 
between  Puritan  and  Cavalier,  Parliament  and  King.  It 
raged  about  the  home  of  Locke's  boyhood,  and  he  was 
only  ten  years  of  age  when  his  father  announced  his  ad- 
hesion to  the  cause  of  parliament  and  people,  and  "took 
the  field  as  captain  of  a  troop  of  horse  in  the  regiment  of 
volunteers  raised  by  his  friend  and  employer,  Alexander 
Popham,  now  Colonel  Popham,  in  the  parliamentary 
army"  (Fox  Bourne,  Life  of  Locke,  I,  7).  After  a  year's 
service  he  left  the  army,  and  it  was  several  years  before 
he  was  able  to  repair  the  damage  done  meanwhile  to  his 
modest  fortune. 

Of  Locke's  mother  little  is  known,  except  that  she  was 


176  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

(as  Locke  is  reported  to  have  said)  "a  very  pious  woman 
and  aflfectionate  mother."  She  probably  died  too  young 
to  have  great  influence  upon  the  development  of  her  son's 
character.  The  father's  influence  was  greater,  and  in- 
spired in  Locke  deep  respect  and  affection.  I  scarcely 
know  with  what  ground  Pallas  Athene  declared  to  Te- 
lemachus  (in  the  Odyssey)  that  "few  sons  are  like  their 
fathers,  the  majority  are  inferior,  few  better."  Perhaps 
this  was  intended  to  spur  the  ambition  of  Ulysses'  son, 
or  to  furnish  him,  in  case  of  his  remaining  hopelessly 
inferior,  with  the  self-indulgent  plea,  "  I  could  not  help 
it."  Locke  certainly  was  an  illustration  of  the  greater 
truth  there  is  in  the  maxim,  "Like  father,  like  sou,"  at 
least  in  regard  to  moral  qualities  and  practical  sense.  He 
always  remembered  with  admiration  and  gratitude  his 
father's  treatment  of  him,  his  "being  severe  to  him  by 
keeping  him  in  much  awe  and  at  a  distance  when  he  wjis 
a  boy,  but  relaxing,  still  by  degrees,  of  that  severity  as  he 
grew  up  to  be  a  man,  till,  he  being  become  capable  of  it, 
he  lived  perfectly  with  him  as  a  friend."  That  this  early 
"severity"  of  the  father  was  not  the  cruelty  of  unreason- 
ing passion,  but  the  kind  wisdom  of  intelligent  principle 
and  conviction,  is  made  manifest  by  the  remark  once  made 
by  Locke  to  a  friend,  "  that  his  father,  after  he  was  a  man, 
solemnly  asked  his  pardon  for  having  struck  him  once  in 
a  passion  when  he  was  a  boy."  If  Locke  were  living  in 
our  day  and  in  our  land,  where  all  the  freedom  there  is,  is 
by  no  means  monopolized  by  the  elders  of  the  people,  and 
where  these  latter,  absorbed  in  money  getting,  are  too 
busy  or  too  unintelligent  and  unfaithful  to  train  the  jun- 
iors for  freedom,  can  we  doubt  that  he,  with  the  notions 
of  combined  rigor,  justice  and  affection  imbibed  from  his 


JOHN    LOCKE.  177 

own  training,  would  find  as  much  occasion  to  publish 
"Thoughts  on  Education"  as  there  was  in  his  own  time? 
At  the  age  of  fourteen  Locke,  through  the  influence 
of  Col.  Popham,  was  received  into  Westminster  School, 
where  he  remained  six  years,  and  had  for  schoolfellows, 
among  others,  the  subsequent  poet,  Dryden,  and  Robert 
South,  the  famous  preacher.  The  school  was  then  under 
the  head-mastership  of  the  renowned  Dr.  Richard  Busby, 
who  remained  in  his  position  from  1638  to  1695,  and  was 
able  before  he  died  to  boast  "  that  sixteen  of  the  bishops 
who  then  occupied  the  bench  had  been  birched  with  his 
'little  rod.'"  Whether  Locke  was  "birched,"  or  whether 
his  not  being  subjected  to  that  form  of  torture  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  his  not  becoming  a  bishop,  is  not  related. 
Certain  it  is,  as  we  shall  see,  that  he  subsequently  came 
dangerously  near  to  being  a  clergyman,  and  that  at  school 
he  was  a  good  boy  and  faithful  student.  Perhaps  I  should 
say,  rather,  a  patient  student;  for  at  this  stage  his  educa- 
tion properly  consisted  in  undergoing  a  thorough  course 
of  prescribed  training,  to  which  he  and  his  schoolfellows 
were  held  down  by  strict  discipline.  The  topics  of  in- 
struction were  not  greatly  varied.  It  seems  to  have  been 
little  else  than  Greek  and  Latin,  Latin  and  Greek,  in  a 
constant  round  of  grammatical  and  rhetorical  and  de- 
clamatory exercitations,  viva  voce  translations  into  Latin 
and  Greek,  compositions  in  the  same  languages  in  prose 
and  verse,  etc.  etc.,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the 
year,  supplemented,  near  the  end  of  the  course,  by  some 
study  of  Hebrew  and  Arabic  and  "a  little  elementary 
geography."  Such  a  course  of  training  was  doubtless, 
from  some  points  of  view,  open  to  criticism;  and  Locke, 
later  in  life,  openly  criticised  it.    It  is  certainly  not  requi- 


178  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

site  that  every  person  should  receive  a  classical  training, 
and  now-a-duys,  siu-ely,  one  is  not  shut  up  to  the  alterna- 
tive of  accepting  this  or  remaining  uneducated.  But  if 
one  is  to  study  the  classical  languages,  just  such  patient, 
persistent  work  as  was  insisted  on  at  "Westminster  (how- 
ever modified  in  the  details  of  metiiod),  and  nothing  less, 
is  needed.  I  am  free  to  say  that  I  look  back  gratefully 
upon  the  two  years  of  ante-collegiate  drill  in  Latin  and 
Greek,  which  most  resembled  the  style  above  described,  as 
among  the  most  valuable  in  my  early  education.  Locke 
profited  by  his  school-work,  and  maintained  to  the  end  of 
liis  life  that  a  thorough  knowledge  of  Greek  was  an  essen- 
tial part  of  a  gentleman's  education.  The  experience  of 
his  countrymen  seems  largely  to  have  proved  the  correct- 
ness of  his  opinion. 

After  his  first  year  at  Westminster  Locke  had  become 
a  "king's  scliolar" — a  title  which  procured  him  resi- 
dence and  instruction  free  of  charge,  and  certain  sums  in 
money  in  addition.  At  the  expiration  of  his  school-boy 
life  there  he  was  elected  to  a  junior  studentship  in  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  then  under  the  direction  of  Dr.  Owen, 
an  Lidependent  preacher,  as  vice-chancellor.  In  little 
more  than  three  years  Locke  was  ready  for  his  bachelor's 
degree,  and  in  June,  1G58,  less  than  six  years  after  going 
to  Oxford,  he  received  his  second,  or  master's,  degree.  I 
do  not  find  that  Locke  acquired  any  reputation  for  bril- 
liant scholarship,  though  he  was  unquestionably  not  a 
negligent  or  heedless  scholar.  It  is  of  most  consequence 
for  us  to  notice  that,  like  Bacon  and  Ilobbes  before  him, 
the  fields  of  (so-called)  peripatetic  piiilosophy  into  which 
he  was  invited  were  not  green  fields  for  him.  Filled 
with  a  genuine  thirst  for  knowledge,  his  mind  could  not 


JOHN    LOCKE.  179 

slake  its  thirst  in  such  muddy  Avaters.  Moliere's  Botir- 
geois  declared,  after  listening  to  the  "Barbara,  Celarent," 
etc.,  of  his  "maitre  cle  pliiloso'pliie^''  '^  voild  des  mots  qui 
soiit  tro])  rebarbatifs,  cette  loyique  Id  ne  me  revient 
point.  Apprenons  autre  chose  qui  soit  jjIus  joUr  Locke 
was  likewise  repelled  by  the  "mots  rebarbatifs'^  of  the 
Oxford  professors.  In  the  "  Epistle  to  the  Reader," 
which  precedes  his  "  Essay  concerning  Human  Under- 
standing," he  complains  of  the  "  frivolous  use  of  uncouth, 
affected,  or  unintelligible  terms,  introduced  into  the  sci- 
ences, and  there  made  an  art  of,  to  that  degree  that 
philosophy,  which  is  nothing  but  the  true  knowledge  of 
things,  was  tho't  unfit  or  incapable  to  be  brought  into 
well-bred  company  and  polite  conversation."  In  these 
last  phrases  we  are  let  into  the  secret  of  one  of  the  mo- 
tives which  must  always  be  taken  into  account  in  esti- 
mating Locke's  character  and  work.  Locke  was  a  well- 
bred  man.  Says  a  French  writer,  whose  book  on  Locke 
was  published  in  1878,  describing  Locke's  manners  :  "  No 
other  peculiarity  [marked  him]  than  an  exquisite  refine- 
ment and  the  rarest  mixture  of  elegance  and  correctness, 
ease  and  gravity.  .  .  .  The  only  thing  which  he  could 
not  endure  was  bad  breeding.  Politeness  was,  in  his 
view,  more  than  an  ornament,  it  was  a  christian  duty." 
In  particular,  I  add,  Locke  was  possessed  of  that  pe- 
culiar kind  of  breeding,  which  makes  it  almost  a  crime 
to  know  anything  which  cannot  he  communicated,  and 
especially  to  make  display  of  pretended  knowledge  with 
the  use  of  an  unintelligible  jargon  of  "uncouth"  words. 
Locke  would  have  everything  plain  and  popular,  fit  for 
"  well-bred  company,"  and  he  is  to  be  looked  upon  as  one 
of  the  first  to  illustrate  the  characteristic  tendency  of 


180  BUITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

English  philosophic  and  scientific  discussion  to  adopt  a 
form,  as  far  as  possible,  intelligible  to  the  average  intelli- 
gence. Locke  was,  it  is  true,  also  one  of  the  first  to  illus- 
trate the  danger  of  this  tendency  —  the  danger  of  forget- 
ting that  after  all  it  is  results  only,  and  not  scientific 
processes  of  inquiry,  which  can  always  be  popularized, 
and  that  for  the  latter  a  technical  language  or  symbol- 
ism, and  technical  procedures,  are  necessary,  which,  it  is 
true,  need  not  be  displayed  in  "polite  conversation,"  but 
which  have  their  due  place,  and  must  be  mastered  and 
employed  by  every  one  who  would  possess  more  than 
general  knowledge.  Locke's  very  desire,  I  mean  to  say, 
for  plainness  and  intelligibility,  has  rendered  his  style, 
by  universal  admission,  loose  and  inexact  (not  to  mention 
the  "colorless  prolixity"  which  De  RSmusat  rightly 
blames  in  him  and  most  other  English  philosophical 
writers),  and  has  consequently  made  his  reasoning  ob- 
scure and  his  conclusions  uncertain.  About  logic  Locke 
felt  as  Hobbes  had  felt.  Its  technicalities,  as  insisted  on, 
were  more  than  useless;  they  were  blinding  and  deaden- 
ing. One  should  learn  to  think  by  thinking,  as  one 
learns  the  use  of  his  limbs  by  walking.  "God,"  said 
Locke  subsequently,  "has  not  been  so  sparing  to  men  to 
make  them  barely  two-legged  creatures,  and  left  it  to 
Aristotle  to.  make  them  rational,  i.e.  those  few  of  them 
that  he  could  get  so  to  examine  the  grounds  of  syllo- 
gisms, as  to  see,  that  in  above  three-score  ways  that  three 
propositions  may  be  laid  together,  there  are  but  about 
fourteen  wherein  one  may  be  sure  that  the  conclusion  is 
right,  and  upon  what  grounds  it  is,  that  in  these  few  the 
conclusion  is  certain,  and  in  the  others  not."  Above  all 
the  disputatious,  in   due   logical   form,  in   which  every 


JOHIT   LOCKE.  '  181 

student  was  obliged  to  take  part,  seemed  to  Locke  better 
adapted  to  produce  a  contentious  spirit  and  dishonest 
strife  for  A'erbal  victories,  than  a  habit  of  vigorous  and 
just  reasoning.  In  view  of  all  which,  one  is  inclined  to 
regard  as  probably  true  the  report  that  "  Mr.  Locke  spent 
a  good  part  of  his  first  years  at  the  University  in  reading 
romances,  from  his  aversion  to  the  disputations  then  in 
fashion  there."  Certain  it  is  that  he  sought  diversion 
and  instruction  in  "  the  company  of  pleasant  and  witty 
men,  with  whom  he  likewise  took  great  delight  in  cor- 
responding by  letters."  It  was  at  this  time  that  he  fell 
upon  the  philosophical  works  of  Descartes,  "the  first 
books,"  as  he  told  Lady  Masham,  "  which  gave  him  a 
relish  of  philosophical  things."  Lady  Masham  (daughter 
of  the  celebrated  Ralph  Cudworth,  and  friend  of  Locke's 
last  years)  adds,  characteristically :  "  He  was  rejoiced  in 
reading  these,  because,  though  he  very  often  differed  in 
opinion  from  this  writer,  he  yet  found  that  what  he  said 
was  very  intelligible;  from  whence  he  was  encouraged  to 
think  that  his  not  having  understood  others  had  possibly 
not  proceeded  from  a  defect  in  his  understanding."  The 
careful  student  of  Locke's  Essay  discovers  abundant  evi- 
dence that  it  was  Descartes  who  "set  Locke  to  think- 
ing," positively  or  negatively  determining  his  thought 
on  many  of  the  most  important  points  treated  by  him. 
It  is  scarcely  fair  to  call  attention  to  Locke  as  a  poet. 
The  man  who  was  destined  to  influence  opinion  in  matters 
of  government,  education,  and  abstract  thought,  did  not 
possess  an  exuberant  poetic  vein.  Yet  two  or  three  times 
in  his  life  he  did  try  his  hand  at  verse-making,  and  once, 
at  least,  when  a  student  at  Oxford,  The  Dutch  having 
been  defeated  by  the  fleet  of  the  Commonwealth  in  1653, 


182  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

and  an  advantageous  treaty  of  peace  having  been  signed 
by  the  Lord  Protector,  in  the  following  year,  Dr.  Owen 
procured  the  production  of  a  string  of  complimentary 
poems  by  Oxford  scholars,  of  which  Locke  contributed 
two  —  one  in  Latin,  the  other  in  English.  I  find  in  them 
neither  adulation  of  Cromwell  nor  poetic  fire,  but  a  couple 
of  lines  which  show  that  the  future  philosopher  was  capa- 
ble of"  gushing": 

"  We've  heaven  in  this  peace:  like  souls  above, 
We've  naught  to  do  now  but  admire  and  love"; 

and  still  more  that  disclose  a  philosophic  vein,  as  e.g.  the 
closing  ones : 

"  Nay,  if  to  make  a  world's  but  to  compose 
The  difference  of  things,  and  make  them  close 
In  mutual  amity,  and  cause  peace  to  creep 
Out  of  the  jarring  chaos  of  the  deep. 
Our  ships  do  this;  so  that,  whilst  others' 
Their  course  about  the  world,  ours  a  world  make." 

After  Locke  had  taken  his  second  degree  he  was  elected 
to  a  senior  studentship  in  Christ  Cliurch, a  sinecure  which 
he  held  for  nearly  thirty  years.  For  a  number  of  years 
after  his  appointment  he  resided  at  Oxford,  teaching  and 
prosecuting  various  physical  studies.  For  the  year  16G1 
we  are  told  that  he  was  appointed  "Greek  lecturer  or 
reader";  for  16G3,  lecturer  on  rhetoric,  and  for  1664, 
"  censor  of  moral  philosophy."  He  performed  some  ser- 
vices, also,  as  tutor  to  individual  students.  Locke  had 
been  intended  by  his  father  for  the  church,  and  at  the 
time  he  held  the  above-named  offices,  which  were  "usually 
assigned  to  clergymen,"  it  was  probably  expected  that  he 
would,  before  long,  become  a  candidate  for  holy  orders. 
Prospects  of  ecclesiastical  preferment  were  held  out  to 


JOHN"    LOCKE.  183 

him,  in  case  he  should  do  so,  but  his  thoughts  and  studies 
had  taken  largely  another  direction.  He  was  already  the 
friend  of  Boyle,  the  chemist,  and  had  himself  paid  special 
attention  to  chemistry.  He  belonged,  with  Boyle,  to  a 
scientific  club  at  Oxford,  in  which  all  sorts  of  physical 
subjects  were  discussed,  and  was  laying  the  foundation  of 
that  general  acquaintance  with  such  topics  which  led  to 
his  subsequent  election  to  membership  in  the  newly- 
founded  Eoyal  Society.  At  all  events,  his  decision  was 
in  favor  of  medicine  as  a  profession.  After  unusual  de- 
lays, owing  in  part  to  political  ill-will,  he  received  the 
degree  of  Bachelor  of  Medicine  ill  1674.  The  degree  of 
doctor  he  never  received,  although  in  a  private  way,  among 
his  friends  and  patrons,  he  rendered  important  medical  ser- 
vices and  was  known  by  the  appellation  of  "  Doctor." 

In  the  autumn  of  1665  Locke  accompanied  Sir  Walter 
Vane,  as  secretary,  on  an  embassy  to  Cleve,  the  capital  of 
the  Elector  of  Brandenburg.  He  was  absent  from  Eng- 
land about  three  months.  His  letters  give  minute  details 
of  manners  and  customs,  which  he  observed  with  charac- 
teristic curiosity.  Occasionally  he  grows  humorous.  Re- 
ferring to  the  heavy  "brass"  money  of  the  Brandenburgers, 
he  says,  "I  wondered  at  first  why  the  market  people  brought 
their  wares  in  little  carts  drawn  by  one  horse,  till  I  found 
it  necessary  to  carry  home  the  price  of  them  ;  for  a  horse- 
load  of  turnips  would  be  two  horse-load  of  money."  And 
then,  referring  to  their  slowness :  "A  pair  of  shoes  cannot 
be  got  under  lialf  a  year ;  I  lately  saw  the  cow  killed  out 
of  whose  hide  I  hope  to  have  my  next  pair."  Eeturning 
to  England,  the  prospect  of  entering  upon  a  diplomatic 
career  was  held  out  to  him,  but  rejected.  In  the  same 
year  occurred  his  introduction  to    Lord  Ashley,  subse- 


184  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

qnently  Earl  of  Sliaftesbury,  whose  family  he  afterward 
entered,  rendering  important  medical  services  (he  per- 
formed a  successful  surgical  operation  on  Lord  Ashley 
himself),  acting  as  tutor  to  his  son,  for  whom  he  was 
trusted  to  seek  a  wife,  and,  as  the  confidential  adviser  of 
his  patron,  entering  upon  the  study  of  various  political 
and  religious  questions  of  weighty  interest.  It  may  be  of 
special  interest  to  us  to  recall  the  circumstance  that  it 
was  Locke  who,  as  secretary  to  Lord  Ashley,  the  most 
active  and  influential  of  the  proprietors  of  "  Carolina," 
was  called  upon  to  draw  up  a  scheme  entitled  "The 
Fundamental  Constitutions  for  the  Government  of  Caro- 
lina," in  view  of  an  attempt  then  making  to  plant  a  col- 
ony there.  Although  everything  in  this  scheme  is  not  to 
be  ascribed  to  Locke,  yet  many  of  its  provisions,  as  has 
been  observed, are  in  characteristic  agreement  with  the  lib- 
eral views  he  was  about  that  time  expressing  in  an  "  Essay 
on  Toleration,"  which  he  never  finished.  Among  them 
are  the  following:  That  "any  seven  or  more  persons,  agree- 
ing in  any  religion,  shall  constitute  a  church  or  profession 
to  which  they  shall  give  some  name  to  distinguish  it  from 
others";  that  "in  the  tei'ms  of  communion  of  every 
church  or  profession  these  following  shall  be  three  .  .  .  : 
1.  That  there  is  a  God ;  2.  That  God  is  publicly  to  be  wor- 
shipped ;  3.  That  it  is  lawful,  and  the  duty  of  every  man, 
being  thereunto  called  by  those  that  govern,  to  bear  wit- 
ness to  that  truth  " ;  "  No  person  above  seventeen  years  of 
age  shall  have  any  benefit  or  protection  of  the  law,  or  be 
capable  of  any  place  of  profit  or  honour,  who  is  not  a 
member  of  some  church  or  profession,  having  his  name 
recorded  in  some  one,  and  but  one,  religious  record  at 
once " ;  "  No  person  whatsoever  shall  disturb,  molest,  or 


JOHN"   LOCKE.  185 

persecute  another  for  his  speculative  opinions  in  religion 
or  his  way  of  worship."  Obviously  we  are  here  far  re- 
moved from  that  governmental  absolutism  in  matters  of 
religious  doctrine  which  Hobbes  allowed,  and  far  in  ad- 
vance of  the  intolerance  of  which  Locke,  in  his  own  life- 
time and  country,  was  an  impatient  witness.  I  may  as 
well  answer  right  here  the  question  which  may  naturally 
be  asked  concerning  Locke's  own  religious  views.  I  have 
only  to  say  that  he  was,  throughout  his  life,  a  sincere 
Christian,  but  one  whose  Christianity  was  of  the  most 
beneficent  type,  namely,  practical.  "  The  christian  religion 
we  profess  is  not  a  notional  science,"  said  he,  "  to  furnish 
speculation  to  the  brain  or  discourse  to  the  tongue,  but  a 
rule  of  righteousness  to  influence  our  lives."  He  accepted 
the  christian  revelation,  and  wrote  a  work  which  he  was 
subsequently  called  upon  to  defend,  on  "The  Eeasonable- 
ness  of  Christianity."  But  in  the  matter  of  dogmatic 
interpretation  he  claimed  and  allowed  the  largest  liberty. 
In  1672  Locke  had  some  thought  of  visiting  the 
American  colonies  for  his  health.  Instead  of  this  he 
made  a  short  visit  to  France.  Locke's  health  was  never 
firm.  Perhaps  this  was  one  thing  that  deterred  him 
from  marrying.  At  any  rate,  when  at  one  time  he  was 
urged  to  marry,  he  replied  playfully  that  his  health  was 
the  only  mistress  whom  he  had  for  a  long  time  courted  — 
a  mistress  so  reserved  that  it  would  likely  require  all  that 
remained  of  his  life  to  secure  her  good  graces  and  keep 
her  in  good  humor.  In  1672  his  relation  to  Shaftesbury, 
then  lord  chancellor,  had  procured  him  the  salaried  office 
of  secretary  of  presentations,  and  in  the  following  year 
the  secretaryship  of  the  council  of  trade  and  plantations. 
In  1675,  having  obtained  a  medical  studentship  at  Christ 


186  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

Church  College,  he  was  led  by  his  ill  health  to  make  a 
second  journey  to  France,  where  he  remained,  first  in  the 
south  of  France,  afterward  in  Paris,  nearly  four  years. 
During  this  absence  he  was  a  careful  and  extremely  mi- 
nute observer  of  manners  and  customs,  seeking  in  every 
way  to  add  to  his  knowledge,  and  to  learn  of  facts  which 
might  be  of  value  to  his  friend  Boyle  and  the  Eoyal 
Society.  At  Paris  he  formed  valuable  relations  with  men 
of  science.  Everywhere  his  note-book  accompanied  him, 
it  being  his  custom  to  employ  it  not  only  for  the  regis- 
tration of  facts  observed,  but  also  for  the  noting  down  of 
thoughts  as,  and  whenever,  they  occurred  to  him.  For  all 
the  time  his  brain  was  busy  with  varied  problems  relating 
to  religion  and  politics,  medical  science,  and  the  nature 
and  limitations  of  human  knowledge.  Returning  to  Eng- 
land, we  find  Locke  engaged  in  the  greatest  variety  of 
occupations.  He  is  making  trips  into  the  country,  corre- 
sponding among  others  with  his  French  friends,  counselling 
and  assisting  Lord  Shaftesbury  in  his  political  duties,  super- 
intending the  education  of  the  latter's  grandson,  destined 
to  become  so  well  known  as  a  philosophical  writer,  writ- 
ing verses  to  a  young  lady  to  convince  her  that  she 
should  "gad  no  more"  and  that  (in  his  words,  again) 

"Home's  the  heaven  where  you  are  ador'd," 

declaiming  in  very  sensible  prose  —  as  a  physician  — 
against  the  destructive  absurdity  of  strait  lacing,  forming 
the  acquaintance  of  Damaris  Cudworth,  subsequently 
Lady  Masham,  whom  we  have  already  met,  and  finally, 
at  the  age  of  fifty,  his  political  patron  having  died  in  vol- 
untary exile  at  Amsterdam,  and  himself  being  suspected 
and  denounced  on  account  of  his  personal  relations  to 


JOHN   LOCKE.  187 

him,  retiring  for  safety  to  Holland.  During  his  stay 
here,  a  demand  having  been  made  for  his  extradition,  he 
lives  for  some  time  in  concealment.  Pardon  being  subse- 
quently offered  him,  he  indignantly  rejects  it,  averring 
that  he  was  not  a  guilty  man.  He  forms  intimate  rela- 
tions with  men  of  learning  in  Holland,  publishes  in  one 
of  the  first  learned  periodicals  ever  issued  an  abridgment 
or  sketch  of  his  still  unpublished  Essay  concerning  Hu- 
man Understanding,  travels  through  the  Low  Countries, 
becomes  the  valued  friend  of  William  of  Orange  and 
assists  in  preparing  for  the  revolution  which  placed  Will- 
iam on  the  English  throne.  In  the  month  of  February, 
1689,  Locke,  in  the  company  of  the  Princess  of  Orange, 
who  was  to  grace  the  English  throne  as  Queen  Mary,  and 
bringing  with  him  the  manuscript  of  his  famous  Essay, 
landed  again  on  English  soil.  He  had  spent  nearly  five 
years  and  a  half  in  Holland. 

The  following  and  last  portion  of  Locke's  life  was 
filled  with  the  most  varied  and  honorable  activity.  King 
William  was  so  impressed  with  the  sterling  quality  of  his 
political  wisdom  that  he  insisted  with  great  urgency  on 
being  allowed  to  avail  himself  of  it  in  his  diplomatic  ser- 
vice. He  pressed  Locke  to  accept  first  an  important  em- 
bassy to  Cleve  and  Berlin.  Locke  declined  on  account 
of  his  inexperience  in  diplomatic  labors  and  perhaps  still 
more  on  account  of  his  health.  It  was  then  proposed  to 
him  to  go  to  Vienna,  where  the  milder  climate  would  be 
more  favorable  to  his  impaired  constitution.  But  he  per- 
sisted in  remaining  in  England  where  he  believed  he 
could  be  of  greater  service  to  the  government  and  the 
country  than  abroad.  And  indeed  weighty  questions  of 
immediate  and  far-reaching  practical  consequence  were 


188  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

awaiting  solution,  to  which  Locke,  with  earnest  zeal  and 
very  influential  success,  devoted  himself.  These  were 
questions  relating  to  religious  toleration,  political  rights, 
finance,  the  encouragement  of  trade,  and,  as  Locke's 
biographer  rather  surprisingly  expresses  it,  the  improve- 
ment  of  the  temper  of  politicians.  What  may  have  been 
his  success  in  the  last  point,  I  cannot  say.  Certain  it  is 
that  (as  one  of  the  most  recent  foreign  biographers  of 
Locke  perceives,  in  substance)  he  was  one  of  the  first  to 
procure,  for  independent,  reasoned  opinion,  recognition 
and  weight  in  the  determination  of  public  affairs.  A 
Letter  concerning  Toleration,  which  Locke  had  written 
in  Latin,  while  in  Holland,  having  been  published  there 
anonymously,  and  apparently  without  Locke's  knowledge, 
and  an  English  translation  being  soon  afterward  printed, 
Locke  presently  found  occasion  to  write  "second"  and 
"third"  "Letters"  to  defend  the  first  one  against  the 
illiberal  attacks  made  upon  it.  The  religious  liberty 
and  comprehensiveness,  for  which  he  here  contended, 
was  in  advance  of  the  measures  actually  adopted  by  the 
government,  which  therefore  in  so  Air  disappointed 
Locke's  hopes.  It  is  worthy  of  notice,  however,  that 
Locke  himself  did  not  think  it  politically  safe  to  grant 
political  privileges  to  Romanists,  who  acknowledge  in  all 
things  the  supremacy  of  a  foreign  Pontiff,  or  to  Atheists, 
since,  as  Locke  argued,  promises,  covenants  and  oaths 
can  have  no  hold  upon  those  who  deny  God's  existence. 

Locke  rendered  a  more  important  service  to  the  Rev- 
olution, and  to  the  theory  of  political  liberty,  by  his 
"Two  Treatises  of  Government"  (1G90).  The  object 
of  the  first  one  was  to  "detect  and  overthrow"  the  mon- 
archical absolutism,  defended,  on  scriptural  grounds,  in 


JOHN'   LOCKE.  189 

the  published  works  of  Sir  Robert  Filmer  (and  in  obvi- 
ous agreement  with  Thomas  Hobbes) ;  the  second  was  an 
"Essay  Concerning  the  True  Original,  Extent,  and  End  of 
Civil  Government."  In  these  treatises  we  find  the  con- 
tract-theory of  the  origin  of  political  society,  as  in  Hooker 
and  Hobbes,  before  Locke,  and  Rousseau,  and  so  many 
others,  after  him,  but  applied  in  a  broader  spirit  and  with 
a  more  comprehensive  regard  to  facts  than  is  discoverable 
in  the  works  of  either  Hobbes  or  Rousseau.  Hobbes 
made  men,  by  the  contract  through  which  they  entered 
into  a  civil  state,  delegate  and  abandon  all  rights,  except 
that  of  preserving  one's  life.  Locke  interpreted  the  con- 
tract as  the  very  means  by  which  the  people,  the  sole  orig- 
inal source  of  all  government,  guaranteed  the  preservation 
of  all  their  rights.  They  established  government,  not 
because  they  were  originally  unfriendly  equals  (though 
this,  he  held,  was  partly  true),  but,  obviously,  in  order  that 
they  might  the  better  repress  infractions  of  the  natural 
law  of  right  which  all  men  confess,  and  secure  their  in- 
dividual and  mutual  good.  Accordingly  the  supreme  law 
of  government,  Locke  maintains,  is  the  law  of  the  peo- 
ple's good,  or  happiness,  "  the  preservation  of  their  goods, 
the  protection  of  their  persons  and  their  rights."  In 
opposition  to  Sir  Robert  Filmer  (and  virtually  to  Hobbes, 
who,  however,  is  not  mentioned),  Locke  is  led  to  insist 
upon  what  we  should  now  term  "constitutional  limita- 
tions "  of  the  sovereign's  power.  Another  point  which 
is  also  noted,  as  bearing  in  the  same  direction,  is  his  de- 
velopment of  the  theory  of  property  —  the  right  to  j^os- 
sess  —  as  the  exclusive  result  of  labor.  That  this  falls  far 
short  of  an  adequate  philosophy  of  civil  society,  I  should 
be  among  the  first  to  urge.     But,  I  repeat,  it  is  not  the 


190  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AKD  THINKERS. 

philosophical  spirit  which  prompts  Locke's  inquiries  in 
general.  He  would  keep  close  to  immediate,  practical 
facts,  to  the  leadings  of  a  broad,  common  (non-speculative) 
sense.  Prof.  Marion  remarks  of  Locke:  *'//  a  la  super- 
stition des  faits,^^  which  is  certainly  an  excellent  super- 
stition for  any  one  who  is  concerned  for  the  practical 
direction  of  affairs.  And  from  this  point  of  view  it 
must  be  admitted  that  Locke,  with  excellent  judgment, 
animated  by  regard  for  human  rights  and  human  duties, 
for  the  radical  and  for  the  conservative  side  of  justice, 
labored  to  shape  the  unwritten  law  of  liis  country.  But 
not  only  its  unwritten  law.  Though  not  sitting  in  par- 
liament, it  is  related  that  his  opinions  on  subjects  of  ap- 
proaching legislation  were  commonly  sougiit,  and  com- 
municated, printed,  and  circulated  among  members  in 
advance  of  discussion,  and  with  important  results.  Locke 
held  also,  for  a  few  years,  ofHces  of  administrative  trust, 
as  commissioner  of  appeals,  and  of  trade  and  plantations. 
He  published  views  on  money  and  interest,  which  seem 
not  to  have  descended  to  several  of  our  own  financial 
Solons;  for  a  foreign  critic  remarks  that  "his  arguments 
acted  slowly  but  surely  on  opinion,  and  when  the  reforms 
which  he  demanded  were  finally  effected  in  legislation,  no 
one  dared  again  propose  as  a  serious,  and  especially  as  an 
honorable,  remedy  [for  financial  distress]  tlie  attribution 
to  existing  coins  of  a  nominal  value  superior  to  their  real 
value."  That  instruction  in  political  science,  wiiich  has 
of  late  been  so  intelligently  urged  by  some  of  our  lead- 
ing educators,  would,  it  is  obvious,  find  some  of  its  most 
valuable  and  practical  texts  in  Locke's  writings;  and  I 
hope  all  will  agree  with  me  in  wishing  that  two  or  three 
hundred  of  our  national  legislators  could  take  a  few  les- 


JOHK   LOCKE.  191 

sons  from  him  in  the  ethics  of  finance.  It  is  interesting 
in  this  connection  to  note  in  passing,  painful  as  the 
th^ight  may  be  to  the  advocates  of  the  "people's  money," 
that  Locke  was  one  of  the  original  proprietors  of  the 
Bank  of  England,  founded  in  1694. 

It  is  of  interest  to  remember  that  among  the  friends 
with  whom  Locke  at  periods  was  in  active  correspondence, 
was  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  Their  acquaintance  may  liave 
begun  through  their  common  membership  in  the  Royal 
Society.  Sir  Isaac  communicated  with  Locke  concerning 
his  mathematico-physical  speculations,  and  also  respect- 
ing the  interpretation  of  passages  in  scripture.  Locke 
assisted  Newton  to  obtain  certain  valuable  positions  under 
the  government,  which  the  inadequacy  of  his  stipend  as 
a  Cambridge  professor  made  him  desire,  and  having  re- 
ceived from  the  famous  chemist,  Boyle,  as  his  executor 
(Boyle  died  in  1691),  a  recipe  for  transmuting  a  certain 
kind  of  red  earth  into  gold,  had  some  correspondence 
with  Newton  concerning  the  application  of  it.  Science, 
we  see,  was  then  still  capable  of  pursuing  occasionally 
an  ignis  fatuus,  especially  if  it  glittered  with  gold.  It  is 
fair  to  say  that  Newton  had  his  doubts,  and  Locke  him- 
self is  not  known  ever  to  have  attempted,  or  to  have 
caused  others  to  attempt,  to  prove  the  value  of  Boyle's 
recipe. 

In  the  year  1690  the  first  edition  of  the  Essay  Con- 
cerning Human  Understanding  had  been  published.  Four 
editions  were  published  before  Locke's  death,  together 
with  translations  into  Latin  and  French.  Others  defended 
and  attacked  it,  and  Locke  himself  entered  the  lists,  in 
his  own  defense,  against  the  criticisms  of  the  Bishop  of 
Worcester.    The  occasion  of  the  composition  of  the  essay 


192  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

had  been  the  circumstance  that  at  a  gathering  of  a  few 
friends,  assembled  to  discuss  subjects  of  common  interest, 
the  interlocutors,  of  whom  Locke  was  one,  were  hopelefsly 
puzzled,  and  it  occurred  to  Locke  that  an  inquiry  as  to 
"what  objects  our  understandings  were  or  were  not  fitted 
to  deal  with,"  must  be  made  before  they  could  profitably 
proceed  further  with  their  discussion.  A  person  who  was 
present  at  the  famous  gathering  has  told  us  that  the  con- 
versation turned  upon  questions  of  morals  and  revealed 
religion.  For  twenty  years  Locke  was  occupied  with 
the  reflections  which  issued  in  the  essay,  and  during 
this  time,  as  we  know,  his  life  had  been  so  unsettled, 
and  his  occupations  so  various,  that  the  opportunities  for 
continued  thought  and  literary  labor  must  have  been 
rare.  In  view  of  the  disconnected  way  in  which  it  was 
brought  to  completion,  Locke  himself  claims  the  reader's 
pardon  if  he  discover  in  it  a  degree  both  of  prolixity  and 
apparent  incoherence. 

Fox  Bourne,  Locke's  recent  biographer,  declares  that 
Locke's  conscious  purpose  was  "not  to  build  up  a  meta- 
physical theory,  but  to  ascertain  by  actual  observation 
what  were  the  means  and  methods  by  which  ordinary  peo- 
ple acquired  knowledge  and  developed  their  thinking  fac- 
ulties." In  other  words,  Locke  would  furnish  so  much  of 
descriptive  psychology  as  relates  to  the  cognitive  functions. 
He  would  ascertain  what  are  the  exact  historical  facts 
respecting  the  growth  of  intelligence  in  the  individual. 
Had  this  really  been  Locke's  only  purpose,  and  had  he 
strictly  adhered  to  it,  I  doubt  if  his  name  would  ever  have 
been  mentioned  but  with  the  respect  and  gratitude  due  to 
every  one  who  explores  and  describes  a  portion  of  tlie  field 
of  phenomena  with  more  accuracy  than  any  predecessor. 


JOHN"   LOCKE.  193 

But  this  was  not  the  case.  In  general,  those  who  most 
scout  metaphysics  are  the  most  dogmatic  in  their  meta- 
physical assumptions.  Every  man  must  have,  and  does 
have,  consciously  or  virtually,  his  philosophy,  and  if  from 
prejudice  or  indolence  he  will  not  take  it  from  philoso- 
phers, or  seek  it  by  appropriate  philosophical  methods,  he 
IS  sure  to  take  it  from  some  other  source,  and  the  chances 
are  ten  to  one  that  he  will  be  led  astray.  The  empirical 
psychologist  is  rarely  content  to  be  that  and  nothing  else, 
but  is  prone  to  seek  in  his  science  the  answer  to  philo- 
sophical questions.  This  is  what  Locke  intentionally  did. 
But  for  this  very  reason,  in  the  language  of  an  extremely 
able  English  critic,  he  "  took  description  for  explana- 
tion"—  and  incomplete  description  at  that.  The  "facts" 
described,  the  phenomena  of  mind,  were  held  (and  were 
expressly  employed)  to  disprove  a  famous  pyschological 
hypothesis  of  metaphysical  bearings,  and  to  contain  the 
only  possible  answer  to  important  philosophical  questions. 
Instead  of  rising  to  the  height  of  a  commanding  princi- 
ple, he  fed  in  the  valleys  and  shadows  of  minute  facts  of 
appearance.  Of  his  honest  purpose  and  sincere  conviction 
there  cannot  be  the  slightest  question.  But  then  some- 
thing more  than  this  is  requisite  to  establish  one's  claim 
to  adequate  philosophical  insight. 

The  hypothesis  upon  whicli  Locke  made  war,  and  to 
the  refutation  of  which  the  first  book  of  his  Essay  is 
devoted,  was  the  hypothesis  of  so-called  Innate  Ideas. 
This  book  was  the  one  last  written,  and  the  polemics  it 
contains  cannot  be  fully  appreciated  without  a  knowledge 
of  the  positive  views  set  forth  in  the  following  books. 
In  these  Locke  sets  out  with  a  fiction  —  the  fiction  that 
the  mind  is  "like  a  piece  of  white  paper,"  on  which  "ex- 
9 


194  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

perience"  is  the  only  writer.  This  fiction  is  a  thoroughly 
natural  and  even  necessary  one  for  purely  descriptive, 
historical  psychology.  The  object-matter  of  such  psy- 
chology is  made  up  of  appearances,  mental  ^^ phenomena" 
and  these  present  themselves  in  the  form  of  so-called 
mental  "images,"  or  "impressions,"  which,  from  the  an- 
alogy of  sensible  experience,  naturally  suggest  the  notion 
of  a  colorless  mirror  in  which  the  so-called  images  are 
reflected,  or  of  a  "piece  of  white  paper"  on  which  the 
impressions  are  stamped.  All  science  of  phenomena  pro- 
ceeds on  the  basis  of  similar  fictions.  Thus  physical  sci- 
ence assumes  atoms  and  blind  or  mechanical  forces, 
which  are  never  given  in  sensible  experience,  cannot  be 
construed  in  sensible  imagination,  and  are  for  science  at 
most  symbols  of  the  unknown.  The  important  thing  to 
notice  is  that  such  working  hypotheses  or  "auxiliary 
conceptions"  have,  and  can  have,  no  absolute  validity 
until  interpreted  and,  if  need  be,  corrected  in  the  light 
of  a  philosophical  principle. 

The  mind,  now,  being  assumed  (not  observed  or  dem- 
onstrated) to  resemble  a  piece  of  white  paper,  or,  in  other 
words,  to  possess  originally  no  nature  nor  any  power  of 
its  own,  is  supposed  to  be  provided  with  all  the  "  mate- 
rials" of  its  knowledge  by  processes  which  are  essentially 
independent  of  its  own  activity,  and  of  which  involuntary 
sensation  is  the  all-inclusive  "original."  Moreover, 
nothing  belongs  to  mind,  or  to  its  nature,  except  what 
comes  into  it  and  remains  there  in  the  form  of  a  conscious 
possession  or  state,  i.e.  in  the  form  of  an  observable  image 
or  "idea."  This  latter  position  constitutes  the  nerve  of 
Locke's  argument  against  innate  ideas.  Holding  this 
essentially  static  view  of  mind   and   of  knowledge,  the 


JOH]Sr  LOCKE.  195 

doctrine  of  innate  ideas  could  mean  for  Locke  nothing 
but  the  doctrine  that  certain  ideas  are  clearly  and  neces- 
sarily in  the  mind  of  every  individual  from  the  beginning 
of  his  conscious  life.  But  nothing  is  plainer  than  that 
"children,  savages,  idiots,"  and  the  greater  number  of 
persons  arrived  at  the  "  age  of  reason,"  are  not  explicitly 
conscious  of  any  such  "necessary"  or  "innate"  truth  as 
that  "Whatever  is,  is,"  or  of  any  such  "innate  ideas"  as 
God,  soul,  substance,  etc.  Hence,  Locke  concludes,  there 
are  no  such  ideas. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  state  that  Locke,  as  Avas  quite 
natural  for  one  starting  from  the  point  of  view  of  purely 
descriptive  psychology,  wholly  misapprehended  the  im- 
port of  the  doctrine  of  innate  ideas  or  the  intention  of 
its  supporters.  That  doctrine  rests  on  a  view  of  the  na- 
ture of  mind,  far  more  comprehensive  and  true  to  all  the 
facts  of  the  case  than  the  view  with  which  Locke  sets 
out.  It  implies  that  mind  has  a  nature  and  an  activity 
peculiar  to  itself,  for  the  development  of  which  exciting 
conditions  —  be  these  sensible  "impressions"  or  some- 
thing else  —  may  be  needed,  but  which  are  distinguished 
in  reality,  and  must  be  carefully  kept  distinct  in  theory, 
from  the  conditions  as  such.  It  implies  that  mind  is  not 
simply  and  characteristically  what  it  has,  but  what  it 
does,  not  a  state,  but  an  activity.  "Innate  ideas"  (an 
unfortunate  phrase,  it  must  be  confessed)  are  the  in- 
herent, independent,  rational  fibres  of  the  mind's  own  ac- 
tivity (as  distinguished  from  that  side  of  mind  by  which, 
as  in  sensation,  it  is  relatively  passive),  and  it  is  by  no 
means  necessary  that  they  should  become  visible,  and  be 
explicitly  and  universally  and  constantly  recognized  as 
threads    or    states    of    empirical    consciousness    (or    as 


196  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

"ideas"),  in  order  to  prove  their  reality.  They  are  pres- 
ent still,  if  only  virtually  and  unconsciously,  determining 
the  direction  and  shaping  the  results  of  thought,  and 
without  them  no  rational  consciousness  whatever  would 
be  possible. 

This  is  implicitly  allowed  by  Locke,  when,  proceeding 
with  his  work,  he  finds  it  impossible  to  carry  out  his  first 
fancy  of  the  mind  as  a  purely  neutral  tint,  or  as  a  mere 
faculty  of  passive  receptivity.  He  sets  out  to  determine, 
by  reflective  analysis  and  observation,  whence  we  have 
the  "materials  of  our  knowledge"  or  of  "all  our  think- 
ing," and  proceeds  as  if  the  descriptive  account  of  the 
"materials"  were  to  explain  the  "knowledge"  or  the 
"  thinking."  He  quickly  perceives  that  consciousness  is 
not  explained  when  the  objects  of  consciousness  ("ideas 
of  sensation  and  reflection")  have  been  enumerated.  The 
activity  is  not  explained  by  the  objects  with  which  it  is 
casually  or  chiefly  concerned.  Mind,  for  Locke,  is  like  a 
mirror,  conscious  of  the  images  reflected  on  its  surface. 
The  images  do  not  explain  the  consciousness.  Accord- 
ingly, the  "white  paper"  theory,  so  far  as  it  seemed  to 
imply  that  mind  was  blankly  passive  and  receptive,  and 
only  that,  is  practically  modified  in  the  progress  of 
Locke's  inquiries.  The  "white  paper"  turns  out  to  be 
capable  of  "operations"  and  to  possess  " powers."  Here 
Locke  IS  immediately  on  the  track  of  a  conception  of 
mind  as  an  ideal  value,  a  living  power,  an  energy  of  in- 
telligence, containing  implicitly  in  its  nature  that  of 
which  innate  ideas  (in  their  true  purport)  are  the  ex- 
plicit and  developed  expression.  Such  a  conception  fur- 
nishes the  only  true  key  to  man's  characteristic  nature, 
and  is  indeed  the  door  by  which  (and  not  by  any  mere 


JOHN   LOCKE.  197 

classification  or  registration  of  phenomena)  man  is  per- 
mitted, if  at  all,  to  enter  into  the  knowledge  of  real  being 
universally.  Locke  does  not  follow  up  this  cue  very  far, 
and  yet  he  does  follow  it  so  far,  and  the  language  which 
he  employs  in  his  discussions  is  so  indeterminate,  that  it 
has  been  possible  for  some  to  find  in  his  Essay  quite  the 
opposite  of  the  pure  empiricism  and  sensationalism  which 
he  seems  to  teach,  and  to  which  (as  we  shall  see  in  subse- 
quent chapters)  the  historical  development  of  his  ideas 
distinctly  led,  namely,  a  so-called  "  intellectualism,"  vir- 
tually tantamount  to  Aristotle's  "active  reason"  or 
Kant's  "  reiner  Versiandy  Locke's  prevailing  tendency, 
however,  is  certainly  not  in  this  direction.  Mind  con- 
tinues to  be  conceived  by  him,  after  sensible  analogies,  as 
an  unknown  and  inconceivable  something,  an  attribute- 
less  and  hence  indefinable  substratum,  or  "substance," 
on  which  "ideas"  may  be  spread  and  to  which  they  ad- 
here. Matter,  on  the  other  hand,  is  for  him  the  name  of 
another  form  of  apparent  "substance,"  of  ^vhich  our 
knowledge  is  equally  indefinite.  Hence  Locke's  admis- 
sion—  so  startling  to  his  contemporaries  —  that  the  sub- 
stance of  the  soul  might  be  material.  Since  nothing  was 
known  either  of  immaterial  or  material  substance,  it 
might  obviously  be  the  case,  for  aught  that  he  could  tell, 
that  both  were  intrinsically  identical. 

Locke  sought,  in  his  general  tendency,  to  reduce  the 
intelligible  to  the  sensible,  and  to  explain  the  former 
through  the  analogy  or  on  the  basis  of  the  latter.  The 
ontological  agnosticism  to  which  he  was  led  was  the  same 
which,  in  the  whole  history  of  thought,  has  resulted  —  as 
it  must  necessarily  result  — from  similar  attempts.  That 
Locke  did  not  rigorously  deduce  and  apply  all  the  con- 


198  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

sequences  of  this  result  and  proclaim  a  universal  philo- 
sophical scepticism,  was  due  to  the  confusion  of  his  own 
thought,  and  to  the  practical  hold  which  the  vital,  syn- 
thetic truths  by  which  alone  man,  as  man,  in  the  true 
sense  lives,  through  which  the  universe  subsists,  and  which 
all  positive,  aflBrmative  philosophy  defends,  had  upon  him. 
It  remained  for  David  Hume,  as  the  spokesman  of  a  later 
generation,  to  complete  Locke's  destructive  work. 

On  ethics  Locke  wrote  nothing,  though  repeatedly 
urged  to  do  so  and  having  it  for  a  time  in  mind.  His 
final  conclusion  was  that  there  was  no  occasion  for  such 
a  work;  the  Gospel,  as  he  alleged,  containing  " so  per- 
fect a  body  of  ethics  that  reason  may  be  excused  from 
that  inquiry,  since  she  may  find  man's  duty  clearer  and 
easier  in  revelation  than  in  herself"  (cf.  Bacon).  But 
whenever  Locke  finds  occasion,  incidentally,  to  express 
himself  concerning  a  question  of  ethical  inquiry,  he  falls 
at  once  into  the  hedonistic  or  utilitarian  vein,  guided  by 
such  principles  as  that  "It  is  a  man's  proper  business  to 
seek  happiness  and  avoid  misery"  (which  Kant  would 
term,  with  justice,  a  rule  of  prudence,  and  not  a  law  of 
morality), Q-XiCi  that  that  is  "always  the  greatest  vice  whose 
consequences  draw  after  it  the  greatest  harm."  It  is  tlie 
failure  to  raise  himself  above  this  point  of  view  of  the 
"arithmetic  of  pleasures"  which,  better  than  anything 
else,  marks  the  theoretical  deficiency  of  his  political  ethics. 
Perhaps  the  most  charitable  and  just  thing  which  can 
be  said  with  reference  to  Locke's  general  deficiencies 
as  a  thinker,  is  that  he  was  but  one  of  the  millions  who 
are — for  whatever  reason  —  unable  to  rise  in  iheory  to 
the  heights  which,  in  the  temper  of  their  lives  and  sub- 
stance of  their  characters — i.e.  in  their  vital  manhood  — 
they  practically  occupy. 


JOH]Sr   LOCKE.  199 

I  have  already  once  mentioned  the  title  of  a  modest 
little  work  ("  Some  Thoughts  Concerning  Education  "), 
first  published  in  1693,  and  often  reprinted.  I  have  not 
left  myself  the  requisite  space  for  reporting  with  any  de- 
tail its  contents,  though  I  know  of  no  work  of  his  in 
which  the  author  appears  to  better  advantage.  One  of 
the  most  attractive  traits  in  Locke's  character  was  his  sym- 
pathy with  children.  One  feels  that,  childless  though  he 
was,  yet  in  writing  these  counsels  concerning  their  proper 
education,  he  is  performing  a  labor  of  love.  The  work  is 
remarkable  for  the  due  and  catholic  regard  evinced  for 
every  means  of  education  necessary  for  a  perfect  manhood, 
in  body  as  well  as  in  knowledge  and  character.  But  there 
is  in  it  no  false  sentimentalism.  The  truest  love  is  the 
firmest.  The  main  point  is  to  teach  the  child  "to  get  a 
mastery  over  his  inclinations,  and  submit  his  appetite  to 
reason."  It  was  more  important  that  a  firm  foundation 
should  be  provided  for  character  than  that  the  memory 
and  intellect  should  be  stocked  with  the  knowledge  of 
abstract  facts.  This  latter  was  the  last  and  "  least  part 
of  education  "  (Bourne).  With  regard  to  which  Locke 
remarked,  very  sensibly,  that  the  tutor  of  a  boy  "should 
remember  that  his  business  is  not  so  much  to  teach  him 
all  that  is  knowable,  as  to  raise  in  him  a  love  and  esteem 
of  knowledge,  and  to  put  him  in  the  right  way  of  know- 
ing and  improving  himself  when  he  has  a  mind  to  it." 

In  the  year  1691  Locke  became  an  inmate  of  the 
Masham  family  at  Oates,  Essex.  He  did  this  upon  invi- 
tation, but  not  without  stipulating  that  he  should  bear 
his  fixed  proportion  of  the  family  expenses.  He  still 
retained,  however,  for  a  number  of  years,  lodgings  in 
London,  where  he  was  required  to  be  from  time  to  time. 


200  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

In  his  very  last  years  he  became  quite  infirm,  the  diffi- 
culty with  his  lungs  increasing,  and  partial  deafness 
overtaking  him.  Lady  Masham  attended  him  with  the 
affection  of  a  daughter.  As  for  Locke,  he  saw  his  end 
approaching  with  contented  resignation,  though  not  with- 
out a  delicate  tinge  of  gentle  melancholy.  On  the  whole, 
I  know  of  no  scene  in  the  literature  of  biography  more 
touching  in  its  innocence  and  simplicity  than  tliat  which 
relates  to  the  last  year  of  Locke's  life.  In  his  letters  he 
is  overflowing  with  love  and  gratitude  to  his  friends, 
seeking  to  give  evidence  of  the  same  by  every  token  of 
generosity  and  cheerful  interest.  The  last  letter  which  he 
is  known  ever  to  have  written  (addressed  to  his  cousin 
Peter  King)  ends  with  these  words:  "I  wish  you  all  man- 
ner of  prosperity  in  this  world,  and  the  everlasting  happi- 
ness of  the  world  to  come.  That  I  loved  you  I  think 
you  are  convinced.  God  send  us  a  happy  meeting  in  the 
resurrection  of  the  just.  Adieu!"  A  few  days  before  his 
death  he  received,  in  private,  the  holy  communion,  and 
said  after  it,  "I  am  in  perfect  charity  with  all  men,  and 
in  sincere  communion  with  the  whole  church  of  Christ, 
by  whatever  names  Christ's  followers  name  themselves." 
The  day  before  his  death  he  said,  "As  for  me,  I  have  lived 
long  enough,  and  I  thank  God  I  have  enjoyed  a  happy 
life;"  but,  he  added,  with  an  old  man's  life-weariness, 
"after  all,  this  life  is  nothing  but  vanity."  He  added 
words  of  christian  counsel  to  those  around  him,  such  as, 
however,  he  had  not  waited  till  that  hour  of  weakness  and 
approaching  dissolution  to  give.  On  the  28th  of  October, 
1704,  while  sitting  in  his  chair  in  his  room,  wliere  Lady 
Masham  had  "cheered  him"  by  reading  from  the  psalms 


JOHN    LOCKE.  201 

of  David,  death  came  upon  him  naturally,  without  a 
struggle,  as  sleep  upon  a  child.  A  fittingly  peaceful  end 
to  a  life  of  quiet  dignity  and  of  the  most  sincere  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  truth,  wherever  and  as  far  as  Locke  recog- 
nized it,  and  of  mankind. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

GEORGE  BERKELEY. 

We  are  ourselves  living,  as  a  recent  German  writer  has 
remarked,  in  a  Renaissance  age,  which,  if  less  impassioned 
than  the  first  Renaissance,  is  more  intelligent,  more  com- 
prehensive, having  broader  sympathies,  and  animated  by 
a  more  just  historic  sense.  It  has  also  a  more  extensive 
historic  range  of  view  than  its  earlier  prototype,  since  this 
range  includes  the  first  Renaissance  itself,  together  with 
all  its  fruits  hitherto  developed.  It  is  this  new  movement 
which  has  found  expression  in  the  remarkable  tendency  of 
the  last  quarter  of  a  century  in  the  direction,  not  sim})ly 
of  a  careful  restoration  of  the  monuments  of  all  of  the 
important  thought  and  work  of  our  predecessors,  ancient 
and  modern,  but  also  of  a  vital,  organic  comprehension 
of  their  significance.  The  labors  undertaken  in  this  view 
have  their  counterpart,  and  in  some  degree  their  comple- 
ment, in  the  fruitful  etlinological  investigations  which 
distinguish  our  time.  As  a  result  of  all,  man  bids  fair  in 
due  time  to  comprehend  himself  in  and  through  the  aid 
of  his  history.  Himself  and  his  thought  are  no  longer 
viewed  us  isolable,  independent  units,  to  be  explained 
solely  or  most  readily  by  exclusive  reference  to  them- 
selves, but  rather  by  reference  to  their  places  in  an  liis- 
toric,  organic  development  (or  at  least  in  organic  relations 
"which  become  most  distinctly  visible  when  viewed  his- 
torically) from  which  they  are  inseparable.     One  of  the 

803 


GEOEGE    BERKELEY.  203 

happy  effects  of  this  movement  in  the  history  of  specula- 
tive opinion  is  the  growing  perception  of  a  single  purpose, 
a  tendency,  sometimes  obvious  and  pronounced,  some- 
times indicated  by  negative  signs,  toward  a  uniform  result, 
in  all  the  products  of  philosophical  inquiry.  If  the  line 
of  progress  is  zigzag,  it  is  perceived  that  there  is,  never- 
theless, a  progress,  at  least  in  this  sense,  that  what  the 
earliest  thinkers  were  led  to  hold  as  true  is  also  found 
true  by  their  latest  successors,  varied,  and,  it  may  be,  cor- 
rected in  expression,  but  unchangeable,  as  becomes  the 
truth,  in  its  essence. 

We  shall  possibly  find  these  last  observations  in  some 
degree  illustrated  in  our  examination  of  Berkeley's  life  and 
work.  That,  however,  to  which  I  purposed  here  more  par- 
ticularly to  direct  attention  was  the  rich  tangible  fruits 
which  historical  scholarship  has  borne  for  English  phi- 
losophy. Within  the  last  fifteen  years  complete  editions 
of  the  philosophical  works  of  Bacon,  Berkeley  and  Hume 
have  been  given  to  the  world.  These  are  not  mere  reprints, 
but  critical  editions,  in  which  ripe  scholarship  has  been 
employed  to  furnish  a  correct  text,  and  to  provide  the 
means  for  the  proper  understanding  of  the  same.  We 
need  scarcely  go  back  more  than  another  fifteen  years  to 
meet  with  the  first  complete  edition  of  Hobbes,  and  a 
special  collection  of  the  philosophical  works  of  Locke. 
Nor  has  the  biography  of  the  philosophers  been  neglected, 
without  a  knowledge  of  which  no  one  now  thinks  it  pos- 
sible fully  to  appreciate  a  thinker's  motives  and  intentions. 
Bacon,  Locke  and  Berkeley  have  been  particularly  fortu- 
nate in  this  respect,  through  the  attention  they  have 
received.  If  for  the  sketch  of  Locke's  life,  which  was 
presented  in  the  last  chapter,  I  was  principally  indebted 


204  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

to  the  full  and  comprehensive  biography  lately  published 
by  Mr.  H.  R.  Fox  Bourne,  I  must  now  acknowledge 
beforehand  a  similar  indebtedness  to  Prof.  Fraser's  Life 
and  Letters  of  Berkeley,  for  the  biographical  details  em- 
ployed in  the  present  chapter. 

Locke  was  contained  in  germ  in  Bacon  and  Hobbes. 
That  germ,  watered  perhaps  by  Gassendi,  and  certainly 
stimulated  by  Descartes,  explains,  in  its  way,  Locke.  But 
Locke  does  not  in  any  such  sense  explain  Berkeley ;  the 
latter  is  far  from  being  simply  a  natural  development  of 
the  former.  Locke  is  emphatically  Berkeley's  starting- 
point,  and  explains  his  most  glaring  deficiencies.  For  the 
rest,  the  relation  between  the  two  philosophers  is  better 
illustrated  if  we  compare  Locke  to  a  slow-burning  wick, 
and  Berkeley  to  an  electric  light,  quickly-blazing  and 
intense,  and  suppose  the  latter  to  be  kindled  (though, 
obviously,  not  otherwise  explained)  by  the  former.  If 
Locke  w^as  a  common  soldier,  modest,  but  rendering,  on 
the  whole,  a  rather  mechanical  service,  Berkeley  is  a  bold 
and  dashing  general,  bent  on  conquest.  If  with  Locke 
truth  is  a  thing  to  be  minutely  sought,  and,  as  far  as  it  is 
discoverable,  to  be  undiscriminatingly  and  passively  ac- 
cei)Ud,\i'\\\\  Berkeley  it  is  a  kingdom  to  be  seized  upon  by 
force.  If  the  one  is  calmly  and  myopically  analytical, 
observant,  the  other  is  warmly  enthusiastic  and  asserto- 
rical — not  satisfied  with  demurrers,  pleas  of  necessary 
ignorance,  limitation,  and  the  like;  nay,  indignant  at 
them.  Berkeley  professes,  with  his  more  energetic  vision 
to  penetrate  the  clouds  which  bounded  Locke's  mental 
horizon,  and  lo !  they  become  for  him  celestial  forms  of 
light. 

To  his  contemporaries  Berkeley  was  a  man  possessing 


GEORGE    BERKELEY.  205 

all  the  charms  which  can  arise  from  unaffected  virtue, 
unusual  brightness  of  intellect,  and  sweetness  of  speech. 
The  reader  will  recall  at  once  Pope's  line,  ascribing 

"  To  Berkeley  every  virtue  under  heaven." 

Add  to  this  his  varied  life,  his  travels,  his  odd  and  his 
noble  enthusiasms,  and  one  has  the  elements  of  one  of  the 
most  interesting  and  attractive  biographical  pictures,  of 
which  our  literature  can  boast.  Let  us  briefly  contem- 
plate it. 

It  has  long  been  known  that  no  gentleman  is  so  charm- 
ing as  the  cultivated  Irishman.  We  ascribe  to  him  quiet, 
unostentatious  breeding,  a  graceful  mastery  of  intelli- 
gence, and  that  quickness  and  minuteness  of  perception 
which  is  essential  to  humor.  Shall  we  ascribe  Berkeley's 
possession  of  any  of  these  qualities  to  his  Irish  birth  ? 
For  George  Berkeley  was  born  in  the  county  of  Kilkenny, 
Ireland,  at  Dysert  castle  or  tower,  now  a  ruin,  near  Thom- 
astown,  and  in  the  valley  of  the  Nore,  March  13,  1685. 
He  was  the  eldest  of  six  sons  born  to  William  Berkeley, 
"gentleman,"  a  person  of  English  descent,  and  connected 
—  just  how  it  is  impossible  to  make  out — with  the  noble 
family  of  Berkeley,  in  England.  His  mother  seems  to 
have  been  an  Irish  lady;  according  to  one  account  she 
was  an  aunt  of  General  Wolfe,  the  hero  of  Quebec.  On 
the  whole,  little  —  strangely  little  —  is  known  of  Berkeley's 
immediate  family.  His  grandfather  is  said  to  have  received 
from  Charles  II  the  collectorship  of  Belfast,  in  reward  for 
services  rendered  to  the  royal  cause.  There  is  evidence 
that  his  father,  in  mature  life,  was  connected  with  the  army, 
where  he  rose  at  least  to  the  rank  of  "captain  of  horse" 
(like  Locke's  father).    All  of  the  brothers  of  George  Berke- 


206  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

ley  received  a  liberal  training,  and  one  of  them,  like  our 
hero,  entered  into  holy  orders.  We  can  infer,  with  suf- 
ficient certainty,  that  the  gentle  blood  of  the  family  brought 
with  it  the  tradition  of  liberal  culture,  along  with  deter- 
mined loyalty  to  the  national  dynasty  and  church.  For 
the  rest,  nothing  is  reported  concerning  the  special  home 
influences  under  which  the  boy  Berkeley  grew  up.  But 
we  know  that  the  dogs  of  war,  let  loose  after  the  dethrone- 
ment of  James  II,  must  have  passed  within  sound  of  the 
youth  as  they  rushed  down  the  valley  of  the  Nore ;  even 
as  Locke,  too,  was,  almost,  born  amid  the  turmoil  of  civil 
strife,  and  Hobbes  first  saw  the  light  when  all  England 
was  quaking  through  fear  of  foreign  invasion.  Is  the  sen- 
sational shock  produced  by  such  near  experience  of  wai-'s 
alarms  one  of  the  proximate  causes  which  may  occasion 
that  deeper,  more  active  and  fervid  energy  of  aggressive 
thought,  whence  philosophy  arises?  If  so,  some  one  or 
more  of  our  colleges  may  now  number  among  its  under- 
graduates a  predestined  philosopher.  However  this  may 
be,  we  know  from  Berkeley's  own  statement  in  his  re- 
cently recovered  Commonplace  Book,  that  from  his  "child- 
hood" he  "had  an  unaccountable  turn  of  thought"  —  pre- 
sumably in  the  direction  of  those  philosophical  specula- 
tions for  which  he  was  subsequently  famous.  He  was 
"distrustful,"  he  notes,  somewhat  mysteriously,  "  at  eight 
years  old,  and  consequently  by  nature  disposed  to  these 
new  doctrines."  The  student  who  is  familiar  before- 
hand with  Berkeley's  character  and  philosophy  will  feel 
that  he  may,  without  violence  to  essential  truth,  call 
Wordsworth  to  aid  in  the  interpretation  of  this  "  mem- 
orandum," and  declare  that  he  who  was  destined  to  be 
"  Nature's  priest "  was  distrustful  of  the  "  shades  of  the 


J,  GEORGE   BERKELEY.  207 

\ 

prison-house "  that  "  begin  to  close  about  the  growing 
boy."  He  dreaded  instinctively  the  fetters  which  earth, 
sense,  matter  —  fate,  brute  necessity — were  preparing  to 
lay  upon  him.  Through  and  above  them  all  he  saw  the 
"  vision  splendid,"  which  was  a  constant  and  brilliant  tes- 
timony against  the  necessity  or  substantial  reality  of  the 
fetters  mentioned,  and  already  he  was  in  unconscious 
germ  and  spirit  that  earnest,  valiant  thinker,  the  whole 
power  of  whose  rare  eloquence  was  to  be  exerted  in  order 
to  convince  mankind  that  the  physical,  as  such,  is  insub- 
stantial and  powerless,  that  its  whole  value  and  signifi- 
cance are  exhaustively  apprehended  and  explained,  when 
it  is  viewed  as  the  visible  symbol  and  language  of  Mind, 
—  as  a  word,  or  logos,  which  God  is  always  speaking  to 
us,  and  nothing  else.  Who  will  not  reverence  boyhood, 
on  seeing  it  big  with  a  thought  of  such  sublimity  and 
simplicity  —  a  thought  which  sums  up  in  brief  the  essence 
of  all  positive  philosophy  of  physical  existence  ?  And  the 
rays  of  this  truth,  I  imagine,  illuminate  the  naive,  un- 
prejudiced perceptions  of  childhood  far  oftener  than  we 
suspect.  I  note  further,  before  accompanying  Berkeley 
away  from  his  childhood  home,  that  he  was  here  face  to 
face  with  lovely  natural  scenery.  Away  from  the  bustle 
of  the  town,  he  was  enfolded  in  the  quiet  of  "grassy 
meadows,"  kept  green  by  the  "  gray  waters  "  of  the  "  stub- 
born Newre"  (as  Spenser  calls  it)  and  surrounded  by 
"  wooded  hills."  Nature  here  wore  a  friendly  aspect,  and 
Berkeley's  biographer  is  doubtless  right  in  supposing  that 
these  familiar  childhood  scenes  may  have  had  much  to 
do  with  the  development  of  that  fresh  and  hearty  appre- 
ciation of  outward  nature  which  always  characterized  him 
and  more  than  once  appears  in  his  writings. 


208  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

At  the  age  of  eleven  years  Berkeley  was  sent  to  "His 
Grace  the  Diike  of  Ormonde's  School,"  in  Kilkenny, 
where  he  was  prepared  to  enter  at  once  not  the  lowest,  or 
fifth,  class,  but  the  second.  This  school,  "  the  Eton  of 
Ireland,"  boasts  many  illustrious  names  upon  its  roll  of 
honor.  Jonathan  Swift,  with  whose  fortunes  Berkeley 
was  destined  to  be  singularly  connected,  had  preceded 
him  here  by  a  number  of  years.  Here  Berkeley  may 
be  supposed  to  have  received  the  usual  training  in  the 
classical  languages  and  in  mathematics. 

In  the  year  1700, Berkeley  was  entered  at  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Dublin,  with  which,  as  Scholar  or  Fellow,  he  was 
destined  to  remain  nominally  connected  during  a  quarter 
of  a  century.  The  external  history  of  his  life  as  a  student 
is  soon  told,  and  I  adopt  for  this  purpose  the  words  of 
Prof.  Fraser: 

"  He  pursued  his  studies,  in  those  first  years  at  Trinity,  accord- 
ing to  report,  with  extraordinary  ardour,  'full  of  simplicity  and 
enthusiasm.'  He  was  made  a  Scholar  in  1702.  In  the  spring  of 
1704  (the  year  of  Locke's  death)  he  became  Bachelor  of  Arts.  He 
took  his  Master's  degree  in  the  spring  of  1707.  After  the  customary 
arduous  examination  of  that  University,  conducted  in  presence  of 
nobility,  gentry,  and  high  officials,  he  passed  with  unprecedented 
applause,  and  was  admitted  to  a  Fellowship  June  9,  1707,  '  the  only 
reward  of  learning  that  kingdom  has  to  bestow,'  as  one  of  his  biog- 
raphers curtly  says." 

Some  characteristic  incidents  are  related  of  the  time 
of  his  student  life.  The  story  told  of  Giotto  (but  which, 
it  seems,  was  also  told  of  the  Greek  painter  Parrhasius, 
and  afterward  of  Michael  Angelo  and  Guido),  to  the  effect 
that,  having  occasion  to  depict  the  agonies  of  death  by 
crucifixion,  he  actually  induced  a  poor  man  to  be  bound 
to  a  cross,  and  then  stabbed  him,  is  well  known.     Had 


GEORGE   BERKELEY.  209 

the  requirements  of  his  art  made  it  necessary  for  Giotto 
to  endanger  or  sacrifice  his  own  life,  even  legend  would, 
assuredly,  have  hesitated  to  represent  him  as  going  about 
it  so  jauntily  and  recklessly  as  in  this  case,  where  it  was 
only  another's  feelings  and  life  that  were  at  stake.  But 
a  tale  told  of  Berkeley's  early  college  life  represents  him 
—  whether  authentically  or  not  —  as  almost  suffering 
death  of  his  own  accord,  that  he  might  know  what  were 
the  sensations  experienced  in  death  by  hanging.  He 
had,  as  we  are  told,  been  led  by  curiosity  to  witness  a 
public  execution.  Returning  to  his  room,  he  allowed 
himself  to  be  tied  to  the  ceiling,  after  which  the  chair  on 
which  he  was  standing  was  removed,  it  having  been  pre- 
viously agreed  that,  on  a  signal  to  be  given  by  the  experi- 
menter, he  should  be  relieved.  His  companion,  however, 
waited  in  vain  for  the  signal,  and  when  he  let  Berkeley 
down,  the  latter  fell  motionless  to  the  ground.  On  re- 
turning to  consciousness  his  first  words  are  said  to  have 
been  (addressing  his  companion):  "Bless  my  heart,  Con- 
terini,  you  have  rumpled  my  bands."  Conterini  (the 
same  who  became  subsequently,  through  marriage,  Oliver 
Goldsmith's  uncle)  withdrew,  not  unnaturally,  from  the 
engagement  he  had  made  to  repeat  the  experiment  in  his 
own  person.  To  the  same  period  in  his  life  is  ascribed 
the  visit  which  Berkeley  made  to  the  famous  Cave  of 
Dunmore,  and  the  detailed  description  which  he  after- 
ward wrote  out  of  this  natural  curiosity.  In  these  acts  and 
incidents  are  prefigured  traits  characteristic  of  Berkeley 
throughout  his  life  —  untiring  zeal  and  utter  forgetful- 
ness  of  danger  in  the  investigation  of  facts  of  every  kind. 
Eeferring  to  the  hanging  experiment,  Prof  Fraser 
continues: 
9* 


210  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

"This,  among  other  eccentric  actions,  we  are  told,  made  Berke- 
ley a  mystery.  Ordinary  people  did  not  understand  him,  and 
laughed  at  him.  Soon  after  his  entrance  he  began  to  be  looked  at 
as  either  the  greatest  genius  or  the  greatest  dunce  in  College. 
Those  who  were  slightly  acquainted  with  him  took  him  for  a  fool; 
but  those  who  shared  his  intimate  friendship  thought  him  a  prodigy 
of  learning  and  goodness  of  heart.  When  he  walked  about,  which 
was  seldom,  he  was  surrounded  by  the  idlers,  who  came  to  enjoy  a 
laugh  at  his  expense.  Of  this,  it  is  said,  he  sometimes  complained, 
but  there  was  no  redress;  the  more  he  fretted,  the  more  he  amused 
them." 

All  this  has  the  air  of  the  tales  usually  circulated  con- 
cerning genius — tales  which  are  always  readily  believed, 
if  not  for  their  literal  truth,  at  least  for  their  truth  to 
character.  The  reader  may  feel  already  the  sharp  contrast 
between  Berkeley's  individuality  and  Locke's ;  the  latter 
a  perfect  pattern  of  common  sense  and  propriety,  too  well 
bred,  if  not  too  common-place,  to  attract  attention,  turn- 
ing, as  a  gentleman  should,  about  a  pivot  determined  and 
steadied  by  society,  feeling  and  independently  expressing 
a  dissatisfaction  with  the  sivbstauce  and  method  of  the 
philosophy  taught  him,  but  turning,  for  his  immediate 
relief,  to  personal  and  epistolary  intercourse  with  "  pleas- 
ant and  witty  men,"  and  to  the  reading  of  romances,  and 
not  prepared  till  forty  years  later  to  speak  out  plainly  to 
the  world ;  Berkeley,  on  the  other  hand,  finding  the  axis 
about  which  his  whole  nature  turned,  in  his  own  teeming 
brain,  positive,  enthusiastic,  energetically  subtle,  self-for- 
getting, and  forgetting  equally  the  world,  at  first,  doubt- 
less, surprised  at  his  own  eccentricities,  then  annoyed  at 
their  consequences,  but  very  soon,  as  his  genius  rapidly 
crystallized  in  the  definite  form  of  an  organic,  command- 
ing thought,  which  was  ultimately  reckoned  to  him  for 


GEORGE    BERKELEY.  211 

his  chief  eccentricity,  recognizing  in  this  very  thought, 
not  the  freak  of  an  erratic  and  abortive  genius,  but  tlie 
marks  of  a  genuine  revelation,  sucli  as  in  all  times  it 
belongs  to  real  genius  to  bring  into  the  world;  proceed- 
ing, therefore,  at  once,  while  yet  only  a  student,  in  very 
throes  of  thought,  to  struggle  with  and  seek  to  master  this 
revelation,  and  finally,  as  we  shall  see,  when  only  twenty- 
five  years  of  age,  proclaiming  it  with  all  the  impetuosity 
of  youth  and  of  fervent  conviction,  to  what  he  conceived 
as  a  waiting  and  expectant,  a  needy  and  a  desirous,  world. 
From  about  the  year  1705  to  1710  the  biography  of 
Berkeley  is  almost  exclusively  the  biography  of  his 
thought.  Of  the  individual,  in  his  external  or  miscel- 
laneous history,  we  learn  next  to  nothing.  We  know 
indeed  that  "early  in  1705  "he  was  active  in  j)romoting 
the  formation  of  a  philosophical  society  for  the  discussion 
of  the  "New  Philosophy";  for  it  is  necessary  not  to  for- 
get that  we  are  now  well  past  the  Eenaissance  time ;  the 
modern  mind  has  been  making  some  of  its  most  memor- 
able endeavors  to  go  alone ;  on  the  continent  Descartes 
and  Spinoza  and  Mulebranchc  have  lived  and  written, 
and  their  words  have  resounded  in  Great  Britain  (not  to 
mention,  also,  Leibnitz,  whose  thought,  however,  was  less 
known  and  less  inflnential  there);  and  in  England  Bacon 
had  preached,  Hobbes  had  dogmatized,  and  Locke  had 
analyzed  and  reasoned ;  the  Essay  of  Locke  had  been 
published  ten  years  before  Berkeley  entered  Trinity,  and 
Newton's  Principia  thirteen  years,  and  these  works  were 
^gtjhe  subject  of  active  discussion,  and  were  rapidly  dis- 
placing the  traditional  Aristotelianism  of  schools  and 
universities.  The  new  society  consisted,  besides  Berkeley, 
of  seven  persons  whose  names  are  not  known.    It  appears 


212  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

from  the  "statiltes"  that  attention  was  to  be  given,  not 
only  to  abstract  philosophy,  but  also  to  experimental  and 
descriptive  science.  A  "  museum"  was  contemplated,  and 
the  oflBcers  were  to  include  a  "keeper  of  the  rarities," 
who  was  required,  either  in  person  or  by  deputy,  to 
"attend  at  the  museum  from  two  to  four  on  Friday,"  the 
day  of  the  meeting.  The  proceedings  were  to  be  kept 
secret,  but  we  learn  that  they  were  to  include  the  dis- 
cussion, in  "solemn  discourses,"  of  some  subject  pre- 
viously agreed  upon,  followed  by  free  debate,  which  being 
concluded,  members  were  free  to  "propose  to  the  assem- 
bly their  inventions,  new  thoughts,  or  observations,  in  any 
of  the  sciences."  Obviously  no  exclusiveness  of  scientific 
or  speculative  interest  was  intended.  But  of  the  fortunes 
of  the  society  we  are  not  informed.  We  only  know  that 
the  new  philosophy  intensely  exercised  and  interested 
Berkeley,  that  it  set  him  vigorously  to  thinking,  and  that 
there  soon  flashed  upon  him  the  light  of  a  "new  prin- 
ciple," as  he  termed  it,  a  principle  which  presented  itself 
to  him  with  the  clearest  light  of  self-evidence,  and  which, 
once  generally  perceived  and  accepted,  was,  according  to 
his  unhesitating  conviction,  destined  to  be  fraught  with 
consequences  of  incalculable  value  for  the  relief  of  man's 
intellectual  and  moral  estate.  This  "principle"  now  took 
complete  possession  of  Berkeley.  It  identified  him  with 
itself.  He  became  wholly  its  devoted  servant.  He  viewed 
himself  as  irresistibly  called  to  be  its  mouthpiece,  its 
apostle,  its  protagonist.  In  his  Commonplace  Book  we  are 
privileged  to  see  Berkeley  putting  himself,  as  it  were,  id% 
training,  morally  and  intellectually,  to  enter  the  arena  of 
opinion  with  his  priceless  principle.  We  see  him  bal- 
ancing, swinging,  poising  himself,  seeking  to  strip  himself 


GEORGE  BERKELEY.  213 

of  dead  weights  of  prejudice  or  incautious  ferror,  strength- 
euing  his  intellectual  joints,  minutely  examining  all  the 
parts  of  his  mental  harness,  encouraging  and  cautioning 
himself.  His  new  principle  is  a  philosophical  one,  it  is  a 
theory  of  the  nature,  the  definition,  the  explanation  of 
existence.  Accordingly  we  find  him  testing  the  applica- 
tion of  Ms  definition  to  all  the  leading  forms  and  attri- 
butes of  existence,  to  matter  and  spirit,  time  and  space, 
cause  and  substance,  understanding  and  will.  Of  course, 
iiniong  these  thoughts  jotted  down  from  day  to  day  dur- 
ing a  period  of  two  or  three  or  more  years,  and  relating 
to  some  of  the  most  arduous  topics  of  human  reflection, 
there  are  uncertainties,  hesitations,  contradictions  even. 
They  are,  in  fact,  only  chips  from  the  intellectual  work- 
shop, irregular,  unformed,  or  like  flashings  of  an  early 
morning  sun,  which  casts  long  shadows.  But  in  spite  of 
all  abatements,  the  record  of  this  metaphysical  travail 
possesses  a  very  fascinating  interest,  and  as  an  evidence 
of  speculative  precocity  has  scarcely  a  parallel.  Especially 
touching  are  the  passages  where  Berkeley,  contemplating 
the  resistance,  the  manifold  criticism,  he  is  bound  to  en- 
counter, braces  himself  up  to  meet  it.  "I  am  young,"  he 
imagines  the  unkind  objector  charging, "I  am  an  upstart, 
I  am  a  pretender,  I  am  vain.  Very  well.  I  shall  endeavor 
to  bear  up  under  the  most  lessening,  vilifying  appella- 
tions the  pride  and  rage  of  man  can  devise.  But  one 
thing  I  know  I  am  not  guilty  of:  I  do  not  pin  my  faith 
on  the  sleeve  of  any  great  man.  I  act  not  out  of  preju- 
dice or  prepossession.  I  do  not  adhere  to  any  opinion 
because  it  is  an  old  one,  a  reviv'd  one,  a  fashionable  one, 
Or  one  that  I  have  spent  much  time  in  the  study  and  cul- 
tivation of.  .  .  .  If  in  some  things  I  differ  from  a  philoso- 


214  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

pher  [Locke]  I  profess  to  admire,  'tis  for  that  yery  thing 
on  account  whereof  I  admire  him,  namely,  the  love  of 
truth." 

At  another  time  he  expostulates  with  an  imagined  ad- 
versary. "In  short,  be  not  angry.  You  lose  nothing, 
whether  real  or  chimerical.  Wiiatever  you  can  in  any 
wise  conceive  or  imagine,  be  it  never  so  wild,  so  extrava- 
gant, and  absurd,  much  good  may  it  do  you.  You  may 
enjoy  it  for  me.  I'll  never  deprive  you  of  it."  No,  in- 
deed !  for  all  this  belongs  to  the  sphere  of  that  meta- 
physical prej'udice,  which,  along  with  all  other  vanities, 
Berkeley  has  renounced.  And,  accordingly,  we  find 
Berkeley,  on  another  page,  reminding  himself  in  a 
"Mem."  "to  be  eternally  banishiiag  Metaphisics,  etc., 
and  recalling  men  to  Common  Sense."  To  his  own  ab- 
solute conviction,  his  "new  principle"  appears  like  the 
simplest  common  sense,  almost  truismatic,  and  he  re- 
flects, with  satisfaction,  that  the  ^^ silly ness  of  the  current 
doctrine  makes  much  for"  him.  "Whenever  my  reader 
finds  me  talk  very  positively,  I  desire  he'd  not  take  it  ill. 
I  see  no  reason  why  certainty  should  be  confined  to  the 
mathematicians."  "  What  I  lay  before  you  are  undoubted 
theorems,  not  plausible  conjectures  of  my  own,  nor 
learned  opinions  of  other  men."  "  What  I  say  is  demon- 
stration—  perfect  demonstration."  Still  Berkeley  spe- 
cially cautions  himself  "  upon  all  occasions  to  use  the 
utmost  modesty  —  to  confute  the  mathomaticians  with 
the  utmost  civility  and  respect,  not  to  style  them  Nihil- 
arians,  etc.,"  followed  by  a  characteristic  monition  to  self- 
restraint,  in  these  words: 

"N.B.  To  rein  in  ye  satirical  nature." 

Now  and  then  there  is  a  touch  of  Irish  humor.    "There 


GEORGE   BERKELEY.  215 

are  men  who  say  there  are  insensible  substances.  There 
are  others  who  say  the  wall  is  not  white,  the  fire  is  not 
hot,  etc.  We  Irishmen  cannot  attain  to  these  truths. 
The  mathematicians  think  there  are  insensible  lines.  .  .  . 
We  Irishmen  can  conceive  of  no  ^uch  lines.  The  mathe- 
maticians talk  of  what  they  call  a  point.  This,  they  say, 
is  not  altogether  nothing,  nor  is  it  downright  something. 
Now  we  Irishmen  are  apt  to  think  something  and 
nothing  are  next  neighbours."  You  perceive  Berkeley  is 
preparing  for  a  serious  and  determined  tilt  with  the 
mathematicians.  He  adds:  "I  publish  not  this  so  much 
for  anything  else  as  to  know  whether  other  men  have  the 
same  ideas  as  we  Irishmen.  This  is  my  end,  and  not  to 
be  inform'd  as  to  my  own  particular."  Certainly  not! 
Berkeley  was  thoroughly  assured  as  to  the  nature  of  his 
own  ideas.  Finally,  the  whole  contemplated  work,  the 
incalculably  important  philosophical  revolution,  was  not 
to  stop  with  an  abstract  speculative  victory,  but  was  to 
be  "directed  to  practice  and  morality  —  as  appears,  first, 
from  making  manifest  the  nearness  and  omnipresence 
of  Grod ;  secondly,  from  cutting  off  the  useless  labour  of 
sciences,  and  so  forth." 

But  the  reader  will  now  be  ready  to  ask  what  was  this 
new  and  weighty  principle  (which,  I  should  here  men- 
tion, Berkeley  first  laid  before  t*he  public  in  the  '•'  Treatise 
concerning  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  first 
printed  in  the  year  1710,  when  Berkeley  was  only  twenty- 
five  years  old)  ?  I  have  mentioned  beforehand  that  it  is 
a  theory  of  the  nature  of  existence,  and  before  stating 
definitely  wliat  theory  it  is,  I  wish  to  remind  the  reader 
that  Berkeley  perfectly  perceived  the  folly,  so  fashionable 
in  all  times  among  a  certain  order  of  thinkers,  of  afiect- 


216  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

ing  to  regard  it  aa  a  matter  of  practical  indifference  what 
view  is  held  concerning  the  radical  question  of  philoso- 
phy, to  wit,  what  is  the  ultimate  nature  of  being.  He 
saw  perfectly  well  that  it  makes  a  world-Avide  difference 
whether,  as  a  so-called  idealist,  you  find  the  absolute 
radicle  and  essence  of  universal  being  in  living,  knowable 
spirit,  or  in  an  unliving  and  intrinsically  unknowable 
something,  conventionally  termed  —  for  convenience,  and 
for  the  sake  of  having  a  word  to  designate  the  object  of 
our  absolutely  blind,  and  obstinate,  faith  —  Matter.  In 
the  former  is  given  a  vital  principle,  possessed  of  a  fac- 
ulty, to  wit,  Reason,  capable  of  accounting  for  the  visible 
order  and  invariable  law  of  concrete  phenomena,  and  of 
a  power,  namely,  Will,  competent  to  be  the  source  of  the 
incessant  motion  of  phenomena,  or  of  their  miscalled 
forces.  The  latter  is  without  these  advantages,  and  its 
defenders  must  rely  on  chance  or  irrational,  unintelligible 
necessity,  in  their  necessarily  abortive  attempts  to  com- 
prehend existence.  With  the  former,  too,  alone,  is  con- 
sistent the  development  of  those  practical  disciplines 
which  have  direct  reference  to  human  life  and  practice, 
ethics,  aesthetics,  social  philosophy.  Moreover,  any  doubt 
in  reference  to  the  mentioned  question  of  ontological 
principle  will  reflect  itself  in,  and  to  that  extent  weaken 
and  warp,  the  subordinate  parts  of  philosophy,  theoret- 
ical and  practical,  which  depend  on  it,  and  any  partial 
concessions  to  the  negative,  hypothetical  principle.  Mat- 
ter (in  the  sense  above  explained,  all  alleged  philosophy 
founded  on  which  is  always,  and  necessarily,  and  exclu- 
sively negative  —  philosophy  of  denial),  any  such  conces- 
sions, I  say,  serve  but  to  introduce  confusion  and  dis- 
harmony,  where   light   is  demanded.     In    other   words. 


GEORGE    BERKELEY.  217 

philosophy  must  have  a  principle,  and  it  can  have  only 
one  principle.  I  add  —  what  is  so  obvious  that  it  were  a 
gratuitous  insult  to  the  reader's  intelligence  expressly  to 
mention  it,  but  that  it  is  so  often  and  on  the  authority  of 
such  influential  names  denied  —  this  principle  must  be 
positive  and  knowable.  Further,  this  principle  can  be 
nothing  but  Spirit,  Mind,  Personality — Spirit  Supreme 
and,  in  the  universal  language  of  mankind,  Divine,  when 
speaking  absolutely  and  concerning  questions  of  primary 
explanation,  and  spirit  in  its  various  derivative  and  rela- 
tively dependent  potencies,  when  it  is  a  question  of  sec- 
ondary explanation.  This  is  the  lesson  which  the  history 
of  philosophy  (far  from  being  a  jumble  of  contradictions 
or  a  progress  in  an  endless  circle)  teaches  with  impressive 
and  authoritative  clearness,  and  which  with  equal  evi- 
dence, in  my  opinion,  results  from  an  unprejudiced  con- 
templation of  the  nature  of  thought  and  of  things  (or 
from  the  theory  of  knowledge  and  the  theory  of  being). 
This  is  that  comprehensive  idealism,  which  has  found 
varied  expression  in  the  greatest  systems  of  ancient  and 
modern  philosophy,  and  to  which  the  life  of  man  in  mo- 
rality, the  workings  of  artistic  genius,  the  philosophical 
impotencies  of  physical  speculation  (as  distinguished  from 
physical  science),  and  a  thousand  other  tongues  bear  wit- 
ness. 

Thus  much  I  have  deemed  it  necessary  to  premise  with 
a  view  to  putting  the  reader  in  immediate  position  to  see 
in  what  direction  we  must  look  for  the  positive  and  valu- 
able meaning,  the  tendency,  the  real  bearings,  the  expla- 
nation, the  justification  (so  far  as  justification  is  possible) 
of  the  "new  principle"  which,  when  propounded  to 
Berkeley's  contemporaries,  for  the  most  part  struck  them, 
10 


218  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

as  it  does  others  to-day,  as  only  a  curious  paradox.  Berke- 
ley's doctrine,  in  other  words,  is  to  be  understood  in  its 
affirnijitive  import,  and  judged  in  its  relation  to  the  gen- 
eral doctrine  of  philosophical  idealism,  as  just  now  broadly 
defined.  The  peculiar  form  which  it  assumed  in  his  early 
works,  and  by  which  it  is  (I  think,  unfortunately)  most,  and 
almost  exclusively,  known,  was  immediately  occasioned  by 
Berkeley's  study  of  Locke  ;  of  ancient  philosophy  Berkeley 
does  not  appear  at  this  time  to  have  possessed  any  special 
knowledge.  Tiie  metaphysical  outcome  of  Locke's  Essay 
had  been  comparatively  negative.  Strict  knowledge,  ac- 
cording to  Locke,  we  could  be  said  only  to  have  concern- 
ing our  own  individual  ideas  and  their  obvious  relations. 
Of  substantial  existence,  or  being,  considered  absolutely, 
we  could  have  no  knowledge.  We  were  surrounded  —  of 
this  Locke  made  no  doubt  —  by  various  material  exist- 
ences, of  which,  however,  we  could  never  know  the  essen- 
tial and  conditioning  nature,  or  substance  (matter),  but 
only  the  conditioned  qualities,  and  these  only  indirectly, 
through  the  impressions  which  objects  made  upon  us. 
We  possessed  also  an  intuitive  certainty  of  our  own  ex- 
istence as  so-called  spiritual  or  thinking  beings,  but  knew 
not  what  the  substance  of  our  spiritual  being  was.  It  was 
possible,  Locke  affirmed,  that  this  substance  might  be 
material ;  we  knew,  and  could  know,  nothing  positively 
to  the  contrary;  and  if  it  were  otherwise  impossible,  God 
might,  in  the  exercise  of  his  brute  omnipotence,  have  an- 
nexed to  matter  the  power  to  exercise  spiritual  functions. 
These  negative  conclusions,  the  very  paralysis  of  philoso- 
phy and,  as  such,  pure  philosophical  absurdities,  rather 
than  principles,  were  violently  repugnant  to  Berkeley's 
mind,  and  seemed  to  him  unnecessary  and  irrational,  even 


GEORGE    BERKELEY.  219 

on  Locke's  principles.  Why  assert,  or  assume,  or  admit 
the  reality  of  that,  of  which,  it  is  admitted,  we  can  know 
nothing,  of  which  no  conception  is  possible,  which  noth- 
ing requires  us  to  believe,  and  which,  were  it  possible 
and  existent,  could  neither  effectuate  nor  explain  any- 
thing ?  Why  pretend  that  matter,  as  a  form  of  substantial 
being,  exists  ?  Do  you  say  that  through  the  senses  im- 
pressions of  material  substances  are  received,  and  it  must 
be  that  they  exist  so  as  to  cause  these  impressions?  But 
the  very  conception  of  material  substance,  so  far  as  it  has 
any  positive  import,  means  something  absolutely  dead# 
inert,  unchangeable,  a  purely  passive,  unperceived  sub- 
stratum, in  which,  it  is  fancied,  perceived  qualities  may 
inhere  and  by  which  they  may  be  held  together.  But  the 
inert  is  no  cause.  Where  there  is  causation  there  is  life, 
not  inertia;  and  where  there  is  life  there  is  spirit.  Un- 
living matter  can  neither  cause  impressions,  nor  ideas,  nor 
anything  else.  Besides,  the  supposition  that  the  percep- 
tible inheres,  in  any  way,  in  the  imperceptible,  is  a  con- 
tradictory supposition,  void  of  sense.  But  do  you  argue 
tiiat  your  ideas  of  sensible  objects  are  representative  im- 
ages, which  inform  you  concerning  the  objects  in  ques- 
tion through  their  likeness  to  them  ?  The  answer  is  that 
no  power  in  heaven  or  earth  can  make  an  idea  to  be  like 
anything  but  an  idea.  Besides,  were  such  likeness  pos- 
sible, there  would  be  no  means  of  proving  its  accuracy. 
The  assumed  material  object  is  known  only  through  the 
idea,  and  an  independent  comparison  of  the  two  is  forever 
impossible.  But,  again,  do  space  and  time,  as  unthink- 
ing, nnideal  entities,  so  permeate  all  your  conceptions  that 
you  cannot  but  look  upon  them  as  irresistibly  evidencing 
their  own  reality  and  that  of  all  the  things  which  they 


220  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

seem  to  contain  ?  The  reply  is  that  you  are  virtually 
begging,  not  solving,  the  question  at  issue.  Time  and 
space,  and  tlie  sensible  world  which  they  condition,  are 
not  given  as  unthinking,  unideal  entities,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  precisely  and  only  as  living  functions  of  think- 
ing mind.  They  are  given  only  as  sensations,  perceptions, 
conceptions,  and  in  no  other  form  can  they  be  felt,  per- 
ceived, conceived,  or  known  ;  not,  for  instance,  as  possess- 
ing being  independent  of  thought,  or  mind,  or  spirit.  Do 
you  appeal,  finally,  to  the  common  sense  of  the  non- 
philosophical  portion  of  mankind  in  defense  of  your  belief 
in  unthinking  and  unthinkable  matter?  Berkeley  will 
show  you  that  this  appeal  is,  technically,  a  decided  blun- 
der. Your  notion  of  matter  is  exactly  an  artificial  prod- 
uct of  scholastic  subtlety,  of  which  the  vulgar  know 
nothing.  Common  sense  believes  in  what  it  perceives 
and  knows  —  in  that  which  is  livingly  and  clearly  experi- 
enced in  sensitive  perception  —  and  not  in  an  impercep- 
tible, inconceivable,  indefinable  sometliing,  which  is  neither 
given  nor  can  be  given  in  any  possible  experience.  Mate- 
rial substance  is  nothing  but  an  abstract  idea,  and  this  is 
enough,  in  Berkeley's  eyes,  to  condemn  it;  for  all  purely 
abstract  ideas  are,  in  his  view,  empty,  utterly  meaningless 
ideas.  So,  then,  Berkeley  concludes  —  in  his  own  eloquent 
statement  of  the  famous  "  principle  " : 

"Some  truths  there  are  so  near  and  obvious  to  the 
mind  that  a  man  need  only  open  his  eyes  to  see  them. 
Such  I  take  this  important  one  to  be,  namely,  that  all  the 
choir  of  heaven  and  furniture  of  the  earth,  in  a  word, 
all  those  bodies  which  compose  the  mighty  frame  of  the 
world,  have  not  any  subsistence  without  a  mind,  that 
their  being   is   to  be  perceived   or   known ;   that  conse- 


GEORGE   BERKELEY.  221 

quently  so  long  as  they  are  not  actually  perceived  by 
me,  or  do  not  exist  in  my  mind  or  that  of  any  other 
created  spirit,  they  must  have  either  no  existence  at  all, 
or  else  subsist  in  the  mind  of  some  Eternal  Spirit  — 
it  being  perfectly  unintelligible,  and  involving  all  the 
absurdity  of  abstraction,  to  attribute  to  any  single  part 
of  them  an  existence  independent  of  a  spirit." 

This  is  Berkeley's  famous  doctrine  of  immaterialism. 
It  is  the  negative  side  of  his  philosophy,  to  which  — 
unfortunately,  but  naturally  —  he  was  led  in  his  early 
works  to  give  the  greatest  relative  consideration.  It  is  by 
this  side  that  he  is  chiefly  known  and  judged;  and  yet 
wrongly  and  absurdly,  for  this  is  but  the  obverse  of  a 
principle,  the  other  and  positive  side  of  which  is  a  truth 
of  unsurpassed  grandeur  and  simplicity,  profundity  and 
weight,  and  by  which  Berkeley  appears  as  occupying  a 
worthy  place  in  the  long  line  of  representatives  of  the 
world's  best  thought  and  faith.  This  truth  is,  that  Being 
is,  proximately,  or  in  the  first  analysis,  simply,  active, 
causative  power,  and  that  since  there  is  no  power  but 
the  power  of  spirit,  Being,  absolutely  and  in  the  last 
analysis,  is  Spirit:  whatever  exists  or  appears  to  exist 
can  and  must  only  be  philosophically,  or  ontologically 
(not  phenomenally  or,  in  the  technical  sense  of  the  term, 
sclentificaUy),  explained  through  the  power  and  quali- 
ties of  spirit.  The  application  which  Berkeley  makes 
of  this  truth  to  the  case  of  our  sensible  perceptions  is, 
that,  since  they  must  be  caused,  and  since  they  cannot 
be  caused  by  non-causative,  and  hence  non-existent,  mat- 
ter, they  must  be  ascribed  to  the  agency  of  God,  the 
Supreme. Spirit.  The  world  is  God's  voice,  his  language, 
a  set  of  symbols  or  signs.     Physical  science,  neglecting 


222  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

the  questions  of  essential  being  and  causation,  has  but 
to  ascertain  and  record  tliese  symbols  in  tlieir  observable 
order  of  coexistence  and  sequence.  Philosophy  shows 
that  through  them  we  are  in  communion  with,  and  gra- 
cious dependence  on,  an  omnipresent  Deity. 

I  will  not  here  enter  into  a  minute  and  critical  account 
of  the  deficiencies  or  possible  exaggerations  of  Berkeley's 
youthful  speculations.  It  is  enough  if  I  have  made  it 
evident  that  it  was  no  idle  delight  in  paradox  that  led 
him  on,  but  a  soul-absorbing,  intellectual  and  moral  in- 
terest; and  that  the  philosophical  principles  which  were 
tlie  more  or  less  clearly  conscious  motive  and  goal  of 
his  thought  were  worthy  to  fix  his  attention  and  em- 
ploy for  the  time  being  the  whole  service  of  his  eager 
mind.  Obviously,  those  "coxcombs"  who  "vanquish 
Berkeley  with  a  grin,"  seek  their  victory  in  too  easy  a 
manner.  Nor  did  Dr.  Johnson  show  a  deeper  intelligence 
respecting  the  "new  principle,"  when  he  sought  to  over- 
throw it  by  kicking  his  foot  agaiinst  a  post-;  or  Dean 
Swift,  when,  as  Berkeley  on  a  rainy  day  stood  waiting 
for  admission  at  his  door,  he  left  the  door  unopened,  on 
the  plea  that  if  Berkeley's  body,  a  sensible  object,  was 
only  an  idea,  it  could  enter  just  as  well  with  the  door 
shut  as  open. 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  as  a  curious  coincidence,  the 
circumstance  that  in  the  neighboring  island  of  England 
a  country  curate,  Arthur  Collier  by  name,  was  contem- 
poraneously reasoning  in  his  solitude  with  results  strik- 
ingly similar  to  those  which  Berkeley  reached;  which 
results,  soon  after  the  publication  of  Berkeley's  views,  he 
gave  to  the  world — expressed  in  a  style  inferior  to  Berke- 
ley's—  in  a  work  entitled  "  Clavis  Universalis:  or,  a  new 


GEOKGE   BERKELEY.  223 

Inquiry  after  Truth,  being  a  Demonstration  of  the  Non- 
existence, or  Impossibility,  of  an  External  World."  The 
echoes  of  Berkeley's  doctrine,  emasculated,  unfortunately, 
by  superficial  interpretation,  will  be  met  with  in  some 
of  the  most  noteworthy  passages  of  the  history  of  later 
and  recent  British  thought. 

The  remaining  portion  of  Berkeley's  biography  must 
be  summarized  more  briefly  than  I  could  have  wished. 
The  Essay  toward  a  new  Theory  of  Vision  had  been  pub- 
lished in  1709,  the  year  before  the  full  announcement  of 
the  "new  principle"  in  the  "Treatise  concerning  the 
Principles  of  Human  Knowledge."  In  the  Essay  the  prin- 
ciple was,  in  effect,  applied  beforehand  to  the  case  of  one 
variety  of  sensible  knowledge  —  that  received  through 
sight.  It  was  argued  that  through  this  sense  no  knoAvl- 
edge  of  externality  is  given,  there  is  no  direct  perception 
of  distance,  but  only  of  a  system  of  signs,  which,  rapidly 
and  unconsciously  interpreted,  inform  us  indirectly  con- 
cerning that  which  we  fancy  we  see. 

Admitted  into  holy  orders  soon  after  the  acquisition 
of  his  second  Academic  degree,  Berkeley  remained  at 
Trinity  College  under  various  appointments,  as  lecturer 
and  preacher,  till  the  year  1713.  In  the  year  preceding, 
however,  he  had  paid  his  first  visit  to  England,  on  leave 
of  absence  granted  for  ill  health.  In  the  year  1713  he 
published  "Three  Dialogues  between  Hylas  and  Philo- 
nous"  {i.e.  being  interpreted,  between  the  Friend  of  Mat- 
ter and  the  Friend  of  Mind),  intended  to  popularize  his 
doctrines.  This  work  Prof.  Eraser  terms  the  "gem  of 
British  metaphysical  literature,"  having  in  mind,  among 
other  things,  the  author's  "easy,  graceful,  and  trans- 
parent style."     Early  in  the  same  year  Berkeley  crossed 


224  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

again  to  England,  and  appeared  with  Dean  Swift  at  the 
court  of  Queen  Anne,  where  he  was  presented  to  liis  kins- 
man, Lord  Berkeley,  of  Strattou.  Soon  after  he  was  writ- 
ing thoughtful  essays  for  Steele's  "Guardian,"  against  the 
Free-thinkers.  The  same  summer  he  made  the  acquaint- 
ance, destined  to  be  lasting  and  cordial,  of  the  poet  Pope. 
To  the  same  season  belongs  his  introduction  to  Addison, 
and  also  to  Bishop  Atterbury,  who  is  remembered  for  the 
following  testimony  to  our  philosopher's  qualities.  Being 
asked,  shortly  after  his  introduction  to  him,  for  his  opin- 
ion concerning  Berkeley,  he  is  said  to  have  replied,  "  So 
much  understanding,  so  much  knowledge,  so  much  inno- 
cence, and  such  humility,  I  did  not  think  had  been  the 
portion  of  any  but  angels  till  I  saw  this  gentleman."  In 
the  autumn,  still,  of  the  same  year,  the  Earl  of  Peter- 
borough, on  Swift's  recommendation,  selected  Berkeley 
to  accompany  him  as  chaplain  and  secretary  on  a  special 
mission  to  the  court  of  the  King  of  Sicily.  Returnmg 
the  following  year,  he  went  again  shortly  aficr  to  the 
continent  as  companion  and  tutor  to  a  young  man  placed 
in  his  charge.  This  time  he  remained  abroad  nearly  five 
years.  A  great  portion  of  this  period  was  passed  in  Italy 
and  Sicily.  The  journal  of  his  Tour  in  Italy  is  very 
minute,  and  represents  him  as  giving  the  most  careful 
attention  to  all  sorts  of  things,  to  art,  to  manuscripts  in 
the  Vatican,  to  places  and  objects  of  historic  interest,  and 
also  to  natural  phenomena,  great  and  small.  In  one  of 
the  memoranda  of  his  Commonplace  Book,  Berkeley  had, 
years  before,  cautioned  himself  "always  to  make  much  of 
experimental  philosophy."  Tlie  memorials  of  this  jour- 
ney, as  indeed  of  his  whole  life,  show  that  his  bent  in 
this  direction  was  not  an  artificial  one.    He  exposed  him- 


GEORGE   BEEKELEY.  225 

self  to  great  danger  and  fatigue  in  observing  the  erup- 
tions of  Mount  Vesuvius,  as  appears  from  the  account  of 
his  observations  sent  to  England  and  published  in  the 
Philosophical  Transactions  of  the  Eoyal  Society.  On  his 
passage  through  Paris  Berkeley  had.  according  to  the 
common  account,  an  interview  with  Father  Malebranche, 
the  French  philosopher,  in  his  cell  at  the  Oratoire.  A 
lively  metaphysical  discussion  ensued,  in  the  course  of 
which  Malebranche  became  so  heated  Avith  excitement 
that  he  fell  immediately  ill  and  in  a  few  days  was  dead. 
(Nothing  of  this  appears  in  the  biograjjhies  of  Male- 
branche.) On  his  homeward  journey  Berkeley  composed 
at  Lyons  a  Latin  essay  on  Motion  {De  Motii),  a  subject 
proposed  by  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences  at  Paris  in 
the  year  1720.  Berkeley's  essay  is  supposed  to  have  been 
presented  to  the  Academy,  but  the  prize  was  awarded  to 
a  French  competitor. 

Arriving  in  England,  Berkeley's  attention  was  forcibly 
called  to  the  subject  of  social  economy  by  the  widespread 
agitation  and  distress  which  followed  the  bursting  of  one 
of  the  earliest  bubbles  of  modern  commercial  speculation, 
the  famous  South  Sea  scheme,  and  by  the  apparent  decline 
in  social  morality,  of  which  he  regarded  it  as  at  once  effect 
and  cause.  He  prepared,  accordingly,  and  published  in 
the  following  year,  an  Essay  Toward  Preventing  the  Ruin 
of  Great  Britain,  in  which,  contrary  to  the  prevalent 
method  of  modern  socialists,  he  sought  the  grounds  of 
national  safety  and  strength  less  in  legislation  than  in 
the  individual  cultivation  of  morality,  religion,  and  a 
generous  public  spirit. 

We  may  pass  rapidly  over  the  record  of  Berkeley's 
return  to  Dublin,  his  services  as  Divinity  and  Hebrew 


226  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

lecturer  at  his  Alma  Mater,  and  his  earliest  ecclesiastical 
preferments,  to  see  him  again  acting  as  the  devoted  and 
enthusiastic  knight-errant,  not  of  a  new  philosophical 
principle,  but  of  a  scheme  for  the  promotion  of  education 
and  virtue,  which  occupied  his  tiioughts  and  absorbed  his 
unwearied  labors  for  years,  and  finally  brought  him  to 
the  American  continent.  On  the  occasion  of  his  first  visit 
to  Italy,  Berkeley,  passing  through  France,  had  received 
perhaps  his  first  impressions  of  the  widespread  misery  and 
social  decay  of  the  old  world.  At  all  events,  writing  to 
friends  at  home,  to  whom  he  recommended  an  Italian 
tour,  he  said:  "Your  best  way  is  to  come  through  France; 
but  make  no  long  stay  there;  for  the  air  is  too  cold,  and 
there  are  instances  enough  of  poverty  and  distress  to  spoil 
the  mirth  of  any  one  who  feels  the  sufferings  of  his  fellow 
creatures.  .  .  .  The  king  indeed  looks  as  he  neither 
wanted  meat  nor  drink,  and  his  palaces  are  in  good  re- 
pair; but  throughout  the  land  there  is  a  different  face  of 
things."  And  we  have  just  had  occasion  to  refer  to  the 
low  state  of  public  morals  which  depressed  and  alarmed 
Berkeley  on  his  return  to  England.  He  began,  therefore, 
at  once,  like  so  many  before  him,  to  dream  of  a  happier 
society  in  the  uncorrupted  wilds  of  the  new  world,  amid 
the  smiles  of  a  luxuriant  and  beneficent  nature,  and  where 
the  human  elements  to  be  educated  and  taken  up  into 
the  social  organism  were  at  least  untainted  by  contact 
with  European  immorality.  In  the  year  1724  the  flame 
refused  longer  to  be  contained,  and  Berkeley  began  to 
labor  and  plan  for  the  realization  of  the  dream.  In  the 
preceding  year  a  comfortable  portion  of  wealth  had 
strangely  fallen  upon  him  through  the  death  of  the 
"  Vanessa,"  celebrated  through  her  unhappy  relation  to 


GEORGE    BERKELEY.  227 

Swift,  and  who,  after  learning  of  Swift's  marriage  to 
Stella,  made  Berkeley,  whom  she  had  never  met  but  once, 
the  heir  to  half  her  fortune.  In  May,  1724,  Berkeley  had 
been  made  Dean  of  Derry,  a  living  which  possessed  an 
annual  value  of  some  eleven  hundred  pounds.  But 
Berkeley  was,  as  Swift  truly  described  him,  "an  absolute 
philosopher  with  regard  to  money,  titles  and  power,"  and 
having  "seduced  several  of  the  liopefullest  young  clergy- 
men and  others"  to  enter  into  his  scheme,  he  left  a  few 
months  later  for  England,  bent  on  resigning  his  deanery 
and  founding  on  an  island  in  American  waters  a  college 
for  Indian  scholars  and  missionaries,  "where,"  continues 
Swift,  "he  most  exorbitantly  proposes  a  whole  hundred 
pounds  a  year  for  himself,  fifty  pounds  for  a  fellow,  and 
ten  for  a  student."  In  furtherance  of  his  scheme  he  had 
written  a  tract,  which  he  proceeded  at  once,  on  his  arrival 
in  England,  to  publish,  with  the  title,  "A  Proposal  for  the 
Better  Supplying  Churches  in  our  Foreign  Plantations, 
and  for  Converting  the  Savage  Americans  to  Christianity, 
by  a  College  to  be  erected  in  the  Summer  Islands,  other- 
Avise  called  the  Isles  of  Bermuda."  Perhaps  to  the  same 
period  belongs  the  composition  of  the  "Verses  on  the 
Prospect  of  Planting  Learning  and  Arts  in  America," 
Avhicii  well  sum  up  the  motives  and  hopes  that  animated 
Berkeley  at  this  time: 

"The  Muse,  disgusted  with  an  age  and  clime 
Barren  of  every  glorious  theme, 
In  distant  lands  now  waits  a  better  time. 
Producing  subjects  worthy  fame: 

In  happy  climes,  where  from  the  genial  sun 
And  virgin  earth  such  scenes  ensue, 

The  force  of  art  by  nature  seems  outdone. 
And  fancied  beauties  by  the  true: 


228  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

In  happy  climes,  the  scat  of  innocence, 
Where  nature  pruides  and  virtue  rules, 

Where  men  shall  not  impose  for  truth  and  sense 
The  pedantry  of  courts  and  schools: 

There  shall  be  sung  another  golden  age, 

The  rise  of  empire  and  of  arts, 
The  good  and  great  inspiring  epic  rage. 

The  wisest  heads  and  noblest  hearts. 

Not  such  as  Europe  breeds  in  her  decay; 

Such  as  she  bred  when  fresh  and  young, 
When  heavenly  flame  did  animate  her  clay. 

By  future  poets  shall  be  sung. 

Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way; 

The  four  first  acts  already  past, 
A  fifth  shall  close  the  drama  with  the  day; 

Time's  noblest  offsprmg  is  the  last." 

With  unflagging  zeal  Berkeley  labored  to  secure  favor 
and  means  for  the  execution  of  his  project.  His  persua- 
sive eloquence  astonished  and  converted  the  most  incred- 
ulous. In  liis  own  handwriting  there  is  extant  a  list  of 
private  subscriptions  secured  by  him,  amounting  to  over 
five  thousand  pounds.  From  the  government  he  obtained 
the  promise  of  twenty  thousand  pounds.  He  fed  his  im- 
agination and  that  of  his  friends  by  laying  out  the  plans 
for  the  future  city,  as  well  as  coHegeof  Bermuda,  in  which 
his  unusual  knowledge  and  taste  in  architecture  were  of 
signal  advantage  to  him.  At  last,  after  four  years  of  ex- 
ertions, all  things  seemed  sufficiently  ready,  and  in  Septem- 
ber, 1728,  Berkeley,  a  few  years  after  ills  marriage  with  one 
"whose  humour  and  turn  of  mitui,"  as  he  gallantly  and 
affectionately  said,  "pleases  me  beyond  anytliing  that  I 
know  in  her  whole  sex,"  set  sail,  in  the  company  of  a  few 


GEORGE    BERKELEY.  229 

devoted  friends,  for  Ehode  Island.  There,  according  to 
an  account  given  in  a  contemporary  periodical  publica- 
tion, the  dean  intended  "to  winter,  and  to  purchase  an 
estate,  in  order  to  settle  a  correspondence  between  that 
island  and  Bermudas,  particularly  for  supplying  Bermudas 
with  black  cattle  and  sheep."  His  grant  of  money  was 
payable  in  two  years'  time,  "and  the  Dean  (we  read,  fur- 
ther) has  a  year  and  a  half  allowed  him  afterward  to  con- 
sider whether  he  will  stick  to  his  college  in  Bermudas,  or 
return  to  his  deanery  in  Derry." 

Berkeley  landed  at  Newport  in  January,  1729.  "  He 
was  ushered  into  the  town,*'  said  the  New  England  Weekly 
Courant,  in  one  of  its  next  issues,  "  with  a  great  number 
of  gentlemen,  to  whom  he  behaved  himself  in  a  very  com- 
plaisant manner."  The  story  is  that  the  news  of  his  ar- 
rival having  been  received  in  the  midst  of  a  holiday  service 
in  the  Episcopal  church  at  Newport,  "  the  church  was 
dismissed  with  the  blessing,  and  Mr.  Honeyman  [the  mis- 
sionary rector],  with  the  wardens,  vestry,  church  and  con- 
gregation, male  and  female,  repaired  immediately  to  the 
ferry-wharf,  where  they  arrived  a  little  before  the  Dean, 
his  family  and  friends."  In  Newport  and  its  vicinity 
Berkeley  was  destined  to  remain  nearly  three  years.  It 
were  delightful  could  we  go  back  in  imagination  and  re- 
call all  the  incidents  of  the  Christian  Philosopher's  Ameri- 
can residence.  On  Sundays  we  should  see  Quakers  and 
Moravians,  Jews  and  Congregationalists,  "  sixth  princi- 
ple and  seventh  principle  Baptists,"  and  numbers  of  many 
other  sects  which  flourished  in  Ehode  Island's  tolerant  air, 
crowding  the  Episcopal  church  and  standing  in  the  aisles, 
to  listen  to  the  charitable  counsels  of  the  benevolent  phi- 
losopher  and   philanthropist.      We   should  witness  him 


230  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

founding  a  philosophical  society  in  Newport,  which  has 
left  as  a  legacy  to  the  present  day  a  valuable  public  library. 
We  should  follow  him  to  his  farm,  three  miles  from  New- 
port, and  in  close  proximity  to  the  ocean,  where  he  built 
a  house  that  is  still  standing,  and  where  for  the  first  time 
he  enjoyed  the  quiet  and  comfort  of  a  home.  We  might 
sit  with  him  in  his  "Alcove" — a"  favorite  retreat  below  a 
projecting  rock,  commanding  a  view  of  the  beach  and  the 
ocean,  with  some  shady  elms  not  far  off"  —  where  Berke- 
ley is  supposed  to  have  meditated  much  of  his  "  Alci- 
phron;  or.  The  Minute  Philosopher,"  a  seriesof  dialogues 
against  free-thinking,  written  in  Rhode  Island,  whence 
their  scenery  is  taken,  and  published  subsequently  in 
England.  There  he  received  his  guests  with  "manly 
courtesy,"  gave  counsel  to  the  missionaries  of  the  Church 
of  England,  and  sought  to  elucidate  his  philosophical 
doctrine,  for  the  benefit  of  one  of  its  early  disciples,  Dr. 
S.  Johnson,  of  Connecticut,  a  graduate  of  Yale  College, 
and  himself  a  philosophical  author  of  more  than  ordinary 
repute.  Berkeley  did  not  travel  about  in  the  colonies. 
He  preferred  the  lovely  quiet  of  his  country  home.  It  is 
pleasant  to  know  that  he  was  so  much  pleased  with  Rhode 
Island  that  he  would  have  been  glad  to  plant  his  college 
there  rather  than  in  the  Bermudas.  But  the  king's 
bounty  never  reached  him,  and  he  was  compelled  to  re- 
turn to  the  old  world,  disappointed,  near  the  end  of  the 
year  1731.  But  his  interest  in  America  did  not  cease  with 
his  departure  from  our  shores.  On  the  contrary,  it  con- 
tinued, and  in  his  correspondence  with  Americans  was 
constantly  attested  until  his  death.  To  Yale  College  he 
gave  lasting  proofs  of  his  enlightened  interest.  His  Rhode 
Island  farm  he  conveyed  to  the  trustees  of  the  college 


GEORGE    BERKELEY.  231 

that  the  proceeds  might  be  used  to  maintain  three  scholars 
"during  the  time  between  their  first  and  second  degrees." 
Among  the  number  of  persons  —  over  two  hundred  —  who 
have  enjoyed  the  fruits  of  this  endowment,  are  two  college 
presidents  —  President  Wheclock,  the  founder,  more  than 
a  century  ago,  of  Dartmouth  College,  and  Timothy  D  wight, 
president  of  Yale  College  from  1?95  to  1817.  Soon  after 
his  return  to  Ireland  Berkeley  sent  a  library  of  nearly  one 
thousand  well-selected  volumes  to  Yale  College,  and  made 
a  similar  gift  to  the  library  of  Harvard  College.  Trinity 
church,  Xewport,  still  contains  an  organ  sent  back  to  it 
by  Berkeley,  from  Europe,  in  1733.  "  His  offer  of  an  organ 
to  a  church  in  the  town  of  Berkeley,  Mass.,"  remarks 
Prof.  Fraser,  "is  said  to  have  been  too  much  for  the 
puritanical  rigour  of  the  inhabitants,  who  unanimously 
voted  it  an  invention  of  the  devil  to  entrap  the  souls  of 
men.'"' 

Yale  College  is  fortunate  in  the  possession  of  a  por- 
trait of  Berkeley,  painted  in  this  country  by  Smibert,  an 
English  artist,  who  accompanied  Berkeley  to  this  country. 
The  Berkeley  Divinity  School  honors  him  in  its  name. 
The  seat  of  the  University  of  California,  at  the  extreme 
limit  of  that  westward  course  of  empire  to  which  Berke- 
ley's eyes  were  turned,  is,  owing  to  the  happy  suggestion 
of  the  present  President  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  Univer- 
sity, most  appropriately  named  Berkeley,  and  the  portrait 
of  the  philosopher  adorns  its  walls.  There  will  be  aca- 
demic shrines  to  his  memory  in  this  country  as  long  as 
our  land  shall  endure. 

More  than  twenty  years  of  life  remained  to  Berkeley 
after  his  return  from  America.  The  most  of  this  period 
was  passed  in  the  bishopric  of  Cloyne,  to  the  honors  and 


232  BRITISH   THOUGHT    AND   THINKERS. 

labors  of  which  Berkeley  was  raised  in  1734.  His  life 
here  was  one  of  active  benevolence.  His  Roman  Catholic 
neighbors  bore  public  testimony  to  his  liberality  and 
worth.  To  the  bodies  as  well  as  the  souls  of  the  sick 
he  devotedly  ministered.  To  this  period  belongs  the 
third  great  enthusiasm  of  his  life,  that  concerning  the 
remedial  value  of  tar-water  in  all  cases  of  bodily  ail- 
ment. In  hours  systematically  rescued  for  study  Berke- 
ley conversed  much  with  the  ancient  philosophers.  Siris, 
a  work  of  his  later  years,  which  begins  with  the  praises 
of  tar-water  and  ends  with  speculations  deeply  tinctured 
with  Platonism  and  other  ancient  doctrines,  is  a  char- 
acteristic monument  of  his  ardent  convictions  concern- 
ing topics  apparently  the  most  diverse.  The  peculiar 
idealism  of  his  youth  is  here  not  abandoned,  but  merged 
in  a  broader,  deeper,  more  comprehensive  idealism,  the 
fruit  of  riper  thought  and  wider  knowledge.  The  con- 
dition of  Ireland  attracted  his  attention  again  to  ques- 
tions of  social  economy,  concerning  which  he  suggested 
wise  and  independent  views  in  a  periodical,  "  The  Querist," 
founded  by  him. 

Berkeley  resisted  all  temptations  to  seek  or  accept 
further  ecclesiastical  promotion,  vuluing  his  time  and 
quiet  more  than  he  would  a  diudeni.  He  gave  careful 
and  affectionate  attention  to  the  education  of  his  children. 
Music  and  painting  were  cultivated  in  his  house  with 
results  in  which  he  took  especial  delight. 

In  1752  he  removed  to  Oxford,  where  his  son  George 
was  matriculated  at  Christ  Church  College.  He  was 
already  infirm  and  had  long  been  ailing.  Death  came 
to  him  in  the  following  year  as  easily  and  gently  as, 
before  him,  to  the  predecessor  who  had  given  the  im- 


GEORGE    BERKELEY.  233 

pulse  to  his  early  thought,  John  Locke.  On  a  quiet 
Sunday  evening,  as  he  rests  on  a  couch,  his  wife  reads  to 
him  the  lesson  in  the  Burial  Service,  taken  from  the 
fifteenth  chapter  of  the  first  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians. 
Thereupon  he  makes  some  remarks  upon  this  wonderful 
lesson  of  Christian  faith.  His  daughter  soon  afterward 
offers  him  a  cup  of  tea,  and  he  makes  no  sign.  Already 
the  world  of  the  senses  was  for  him  no  more:  he  saw 
God  face  to  face. 

Thus  ended  the  life  of  the  truest,  acutest  philosopher 
that  Great  Britain  has  ever  known. 


10* 


CHAPTER  IX. 

DAVID  HUME. 

In  Locke,  Berkeley,  and  Hume,  the  three  classic 
names  in  the  history  of  British  speculation,  we  have 
brought  before  us  three  very  distinctly  marked  individu- 
alities. Characterized  with  reference  to  their  philosophic 
tendencies,  Locke  is  the  serious,  or,  rather,  the  jejunely 
sober,  inquirer ;  Berkeley,  the  philosophic  seer  and  posi- 
tivist,  and  Hume  the  academic  sceptic.  In  their  pei;- 
sonal  lives  all  three  are,  although  in  different  ways, 
almost  equally  admirable.  Locke  combines  gaiety  and 
gravity  in  the  good-breeding  of  the  gentleman.  Berkeley 
unites  transparent  purity  of  nature  with  the  eloquent 
defense  of  ideals  and  unflagging  labor  for  their  realiza- 
tion. Hume  applies  the  brakes — always  an  ungrateful 
labor — to  the  precipitous  train  of  human  speculation; 
he  is  the  sworn  enemy  of  all  enthusiasms;  he  is  the 
Mephistopheles,  or  "spirit  of  denial,"  in  British  thought. 
As  such  he  is  pelted  with  objurgations  from  all  sides; 
he  possesses,  as  he  himself  playfully  puts  it,  the  love  of 
all  men  except  "all  the  Whigs,  all  the  Tories,  and  all  the 
Christians";  and  yet  he  is  personally  beloved  by  men  of 
all  parties,  by  believers  and  unbelievers,  being  blameless 
in  conduct,  benevoleiit  in  disposition,  persistent  in  pur- 
pose, cheerful  and  serene  in  temper.  Hume  is  a  phe- 
nomenon, not  inexplicable,  but  certainly  very  striking.* 

•  It  Is  curious  further  to  note  that  with  Locke,  having  liif  birthplace  and 
home  in  England,  Berk  ley.  in  Ireland,  and  Hume,  in  Scotland,  philosophy  com- 
pletes the  circuit  of  the  Britisih  isles.  If  it  doe^s  not  lose  its  insular  character,  it 
thua  absorbs  something  from  each  of  the  elements  composing  that  character. 

S34 


DAVID   HUME.  235 

David  Hume  was  born  in  the  Scottish  capital,  Edin- 
burgh, on  the  26th  of  April,  1711,  old  style.  His  father, 
Joseph  Hume,  a  member  of  the  Faculty  of  Advocates, 
was  proprietor  of  a  small  landed  estate,  known  as  Nine- 
wells,  in  Berwickshire,  not  far  from  the  English  border, 
and  was  connected  with  the  family  of  the  Earl  of  Home, 
or  Hume.  His  mother  was  the  daughter  of  Sir  David 
Falconer,  President  of  the  College  of  Justice;  the  title  of 
Lord  Halkerton  fell  to  her  brother.  I  quote  a  passage 
from  Hume's  brief  autobiography,  written  in  the  last  year 
of  his  life : 

"  My  family,  however,  was  not  rich,  and  being  myself  a  younger 
brother,  my  patrimony,  according  to  the  mode  of  my  country,  was 
of  course  very  slender.  My  father,  who  passed  for  a  man  of  parts, 
died  when  I  was  an  infant,  leaving  me,  with  an  elder  brother  and 
sister,  under  the  care  of  our  mother,  a  woman  of  singular  merit, 
who,  though  young  and  handsome,  devoted  herself  entirely  to  the 
rearing  and  educating  of  her  children.  I  passed  through  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  education  with  success,  and  was  seized  very  early 
with  a  passion  for  literature,  which  has  been  the  ruling  passion  of 
my  life,  and  the  great  source  of  my  enjoyments.  My  studious  dis- 
position, my  sobriety,  and  my  industry,  gave  my  family  a  notion 
that  the  law  was  a  proper  profession  for  me,  but  I  found  an  unsur- 
mountable  aversion  to  everything  but  the  pursuits  of  philosophy 
and  general  learning;  and  while  they  fancied  I  was  poring  upon 
Voet  and  Vinnius,  Cicero  and  Virgil  were  the  authors  which  I  was 
secretly  devouring." 

We  have  above  the  words  of  Hume's  tribute  to  his 
mother's  memory.  Here  now  is  what  she  is  reported  to 
have  said  of  him:  "Our  Davie's  a  fine,  good-natured 
crater,  but  uncommon  wake-minded."  Not  the  first 
time,  indeed,  that  a  youthful  "passion  for  literature" 
and  preference  for  "  the  pursuits  of  philosophy  and  gen- 


236  BEITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

eral  learning,"  has  been  mistaken  for  weakness  of  mind 
and,  indeed,  for  a  sign  of  general  good-for-nothinguess. 
Wliat  that  "ordinary  course  of  education"  was,  through 
wiiich  Hume  says  he  passed  "with  success,"  is  scarcely 
known  in  detail.  He  appears  to  have  pursued  some 
studies  between  the  age  of  twelve  and  sixteen  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Edinburgh,  but  took  no  degree.  We  have  just 
read  his  declaration  that  the  study  of  the  law,  which  it 
was  desired  he  should  pursue,  did  not  long  engage  his 
attention,  and  that  Cicero  and  Virgil,  who  remained  his 
favorite  authors  throughout  his  life,  commanded  his  more 
absorbing  interest.  Did  Cicero,  even  then,  as  the  ele- 
gant writer  and  critic  of  philosophical  opinions,  furnish 
Hume  with  the  ideal  of  his  own  future  life  and  work? 
It  were  easy  to  trace  the  parallel,  in  more  than  one  im- 
portant particular,  between  the  place  of  the  ancient  Ro- 
man and  that  of  his  modern  Scotch  admirer  in  the  gen- 
eral history  of  literature.  If  it  was  due  to  the  influence 
of  Cicero  that  Hume  was  enabled  to  introduce  into  the 
style  of  philosophic  discussion  that  masterly  grace  and 
perspicuity  for  which  he  is  noted,  we  may  be  thankful  to 
him,  even  though  we  may  regret  that  Hume  was  not  the 
man  to  receive  inspiration,  philosophic  and  literary,  im- 
mediately from  the  broad-browed  founder  of  the  Greek 
Academy,  rather  than  from  the  Roman  senator,  his  far- 
off  imitator  and  admirer.  But  what?  Hume's  philo- 
sophic inspiration,  in  the  most  fundamental  points,  was 
not  of  ancient  origin,  whether  Grecian  or  Roman.  It 
was  recent,  and  British.  It  came  from  Locke  and  Berke- 
ley, whose  works  he  began  early  to  study,  with  independ- 
ent zeal,  pen  in  hand,  writing  out,  as  he  went  along, 
volumes  of  manuscript  notes  upon  the  subjects  and  con- 


DAVID  HUME.  237 

elusions  of  their  reasonings.  Just  liow  early  he  began  to 
do  this  is  unknown.  But  he  could  not  have  been  far  ad- 
vanced in  his  'teens,  for  liis  earliest  and  most  extensive 
philosophical  work,  wliich,  in  its  speculative  principles,  is 
wholly  founded  on  the  "  new  philosophy,"  was,  he  tells 
us,  projected  before  he  left  college. 

After  quitting  the  project  of  studying  law,  Hume  re- 
mained in  Scotland  for  several  years,  employed  in  literary 
and  philosophical  studies.  His  "ardent  application,"  in 
comparative  solitude,  to  reflective  pursuits  finally  told 
upon  his  health.  He  suffered  a  "decline  of  soul,"  which 
very  naturally  suggests  to  Prof.  Huxley  a  comparison  with 
the  similar  period  of  moral  discouragement  through  which 
John  Stuart  Mill,  in  his  Autobiography,  represents  him- 
self as  having  passed  at  about  the  same  time  in  life.  The 
immediate  occasion  of  it  all  seems  to  have  been  lack  of 
exercise,  followed,  naturally,  by  a  torpid  liver.  This  epi- 
sode of  impaired  health,  through  depletion  of  vital  energy, 
led  finally  to  the  determination  to  try  the  effect  of  an 
absolute  change  of  life.  He  "went  to  Bristol,  with  some 
recommendations  to  eminent  merchants,"  and  entered  an 
office.  "But  in  a  few  months,"  he  says,  "I  found  that 
scene  wholly  unsuitable  to  me."  He  was  fully  possessed 
with  the  thought  of  his  "philosophical  discoveries,"  and 
with  his  literary  ambition.  "I  went  over  to  France,"  he 
continues,  "with  a  view  of  prosecuting  my  studies  in  a 
country  retreat,  and  I  there  laid  that  plan  of  life  which  I 
have  steadily  and  successfully  pursued.  I  resolved  to 
make  a  very  rigid  frugality  supply  my  deficiency  of  for- 
tune, to  maintain  unimpaired  my  independency,  and  to 
regard  every  object  as  contemptible,  except  the  improve- 
ment of  my  talents  in  literature."     One  may  trace  here 


238  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

distinctly  the  influence  on  Hume  of  those  models  of 
practical  philosophy  held  up  by  Cicero,  and  in  which  the 
favorite  stoic  conceptions  of  independence  and  persever- 
ance are  prominent.  One  is  also  impressed,  through  the 
absence  of  any  reference  to  philosophical  inquiry,  and  the 
mention  only  of  "literature"  as  the  object  of  his  devo- 
tion, with  a  sense  of  the  fact,  elsewhere  in  Hume's  life 
abundantly  illustrated,  that  in  his  speculative  productions 
the  scienfific  and  literary  interests  are  inseparably  inter- 
twined, the  philosophical  work  is  not  simply  to  produce  — 
or,  as  the  case  may  be,  to  destroy — conviction  ;  it  is  also 
intended  to  gain  applause  as  a  specimen  of  literary  art. 
We  shall  see  presently  how  the  failure  to  gain  such  ap- 
plause led  Hume  at  an  early  age  to  abandon  the  appear- 
ance of  any  attempt  at  pure  philosophizing. 

It  was  at  Reims,  but  chiefly  at  La  Fleche,  in  Anjou, 
that  Hume  sought  and  found  the  desired  retreat  for 
study.  The  latter  place,  the  seat  of  a  Jesuit  college,  is 
famous  in  the  biographical  history  of  jihilosophy  as  the 
scene  of  Dcscartes's  youthful  studies  and  incipient  ques- 
tionings. There  is  no  evidence,  and  it  is  scarcely  proba- 
ble, that  a  knowledge  of  this  circumstance  directed 
Hume's  steps  to  this  place;  Hume  was  too  unsentimental 
to  be  affected  by  such  motives;  besides,  Hume  neither 
admired  nor  possessed  accurate  knowledge  of  the  philoso- 
phy of  Descartes.  We  may  therefore  perceive  something 
of  the  irony  of  fate  in  the  circumstance  that  to  the  same 
locality  whence,  more  than  one  hundred  years  before,  the 
youth  had  gone  forth  who  was  to  raise  provisional  doubt 
to  the  first  place  in  the  method  of  philosopiiy  —  but  only 
with  the  view  of  preparing  the  way  for  certain,  positive 
affirmation  —  to  this  locality  Hume  also,  himself  compara- 


DAVID  HUME.  239 

lively  still  a  mere  youth,  repaired  to  complete  for  publi- 
cation a  work  in  which  doubt  is  set  forth  as  the  last  word 
of  theoretical  philosophy;  a  work,  too,  of  which  the  first 
historic  germs  are  to  be  found,  in  part,  back  of  Locke  and 
British  speculation,  in  the  very  doctrines  of  the  French 
philosopher  himself.  A  similar  tone  of  reflection  is  sug- 
gested by  the  further  circumstance,  related  by  Hume 
himself,  that  it  was  while  "walking  in  the  cloisters  of  the 
Jesuits'  College  of  La  Fleche,  .  .  .  and  engaged,"  says  he, 
"in  a  conversation  with  a  Jesuit  of  some  parts  and  learn- 
ing, who  was  relating  to  me,  and  urging  some  nonsensical 
miracles  performed  lately  in  their  convent,"  that  he  first 
hit  upon  and  employed  the  famous  argument  against 
miracles,  subsequently  developed  in  a  famous  essay,  wiiich 
has  taxed  the  speculative  ingenuity  of  nearly  every  theo- 
logical writer  since  Hume's  time.  Hume  says  —  he  is 
addressing  his  Presbyterian  friend  and  theological  oppo- 
nent, Principal  Campbell: — "I  believe  that  you  will  allow 
that  the  freedom,  at  least,  of  this  reasoning  makes  it 
somewhat  extraordinary  to  have  been  the  produce  of  a 
convent  of  Jesuits,  though  perhaps  you  may  think  the 
sophistry  of  it  savours  plainly  of  the  place  of  its  birth." 

The  work  which,  on  the  basis  of  studies  made  and 
reflections  recorded  during  previous  years,  Hume  was 
making  ready,  wiiile  in  France,  for  publication,  was  a 
bulky  "  Treatise  on  Human  Nature."  He  returned  in 
1737  to  England  with  his  manuscript,  applied  to  it  once 
more  the  pruning-knife,  and  in  September,  1738,  sold  the 
copyright  of  the  first  edition  of  his  book  for  fifty  pounds, 
"and  twelve  bound  copies  of  the  book."  In  January, 
1739,  when  Hume  was  not  yet  twenty-eight  years  of  age, 
the  first  two  volumes  of  the  Treatise  (treating,  respect- 


240  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

ively,  of  the  Understanding,  and  of  the  Passions)  were 
ready  for  sale.  Vol.  Ill,  "  Of  Morals,"  appeared  in  the 
following  year.  To  the  results  of  this  venture  Hume 
looked  forward  with  anxious  interest.  He  had  doubt- 
less expected  to  startle  the  world  into  attention  and  to 
gain  applause  as  an  "ingenious  author."  His  latest  ed- 
itor mentions  —  what  there  are  none  among  Hume's  ad- 
mirers to  contradict,  and  what  is  also  sufficiently  borne 
out  by  the  facts  of  his  biography  —  that  "few  men  of 
letters  liave  been  at  heart  so  vain  and  greedy  of  fame 
as  was  Hume."  One  extended  notice  the  first  part  of 
his  work  did  indeed  receive,  in  "The  Works  of  the 
Learned,"  in  which  the  anonymous  critic  commented  at 
length  upon  the  egotism  and  dogmatism  of  the  unknown 
author,  upon  the  fragmentary  nature  of  his  argument 
and  his  close  dependence  on  his  forerunners,  Locke  and 
Berkeley,  and  upon  other  circumstances  ill  calculated  to 
flatter  his  vanity.  True,  the  critic  thought  it  probable 
that  "time  and  use"  might  ripen  in  "our  Author"  the 
qualities  in  which  he  now  seemed  deficient;  we  shall, 
he  said,  "probably  have  reason  to  consider  this,  com- 
pared with  his  later  productions,  in  the  same  light  as 
we  view  the  Juvenile  Works  of  Milton,  or  the  first  Man- 
ner of  a  Raphael,  or  other  celebrated  painters."  But  the 
tone  of  this  prophecy  was  too  plainly  susceptible  of  an 
ironical  interpretation,  and  Hume  termed  it  "somewhat 
abusive."  (There  is  an  anecdote,  deemed  apocryphal,  of 
Hume's  having  fallen  into  "violent  rage  on  occasion  of 
it,  and  .  .  .  attacking  the  unlucky  publisher  sword  in 
hand.")  In  his  autobiography  Hume  says:  "Never  lit- 
erary attempt  was  more  unfortunate  than  my  Treatise 
of  Human  Nature.    It  fell  dead-born  from  the  press,  with- 


DAVID   HUME.  241 

out  reaching  such  distinction  as  even  to  excite  a  mur- 
mur among  the  zealots."  Hume  never  recovered  from 
the  disgust  with  which,  its  lack  of  literary  success  made 
him  regard  this  first  rather  weighty  birth  of  his  brain 
and  pen.  "  So  vast  an  undertaking,"  he  wrote  later, 
"planned  before  I  was  one-and-twenty,  and  composed 
before  twenty-five,  must  necessarily  be  very  defective.  I 
have  repented  my  haste  a  hundred  and  a  hundred  times." 
"Above  all,  the  positive  air  which  prevails  in  that  book, 
and  which  may  be  imputed  to  the  ardour  of  youth,  so 
much  displeases  me  that  I  have  not  patience  to  review 
it."  "I  give  you  my  advice  against  reading"  it.  Ac- 
cordingly, in  1747,  Ilumc,  who  had  meanwhile  met  with 
more  encouraging  success  in  the  publication  of  the  first 
installment  of  his  "Essays  Moral  and  Political,"  recast 
the  principal  substance  of  the  "  Treatise  "  in  the  form  of 
"  Philosophical  Essays,"  otherwise  termed  an  "  Inquiry 
Concerning  Human  Understanding,"  disowning  the  for- 
mer and  desiring  the  latter  to  be  Tienceforth  alone  re- 
garded "as  containing  his  philosophical  sentiments  and 
principles."  Of  course  no  scholar  will  pay  attention  to 
this  literary  whim  of  a  mortified  author.  Hume's  Trea- 
tise belongs  irrevocably  to  the  history  of  British  thought, 
where  it  must  ever  stand  as  the  most  complete  document 
in  evidence  of  the  logical  consequence  of  a  certain  method 
applied  to  certain  data,  all  of  which  were  delivered  to 
Hume  from  the  previous  history  of  British  speculation. 
Besides,  it  is  not  claimed  that  the  later  work  contains 
an  important  improvement,  or  modification  even,  in 
point  of  doctrine,  as  compared  with  its  predecessor. 
Prof.  Huxley,  while  allowing  that,  in  style,  the  Inquiry 
"exhibits  a  great  improvement  on  the  Treatise,"  seems 
11 


242  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

inclined  to  ascribe  to  the  substance  rather  deterioration 
than  improvement.  Mr.  Grose,  one  of  Hume's  editors, 
is  therefore  justified  in  saying  that  "  Hume's  contribu- 
tions to  metaphysics  were  written  by  173C,  when  he  was 
five-and-twenty."  Mr.  Grose  adds:  "His  contribution  to 
the  pliilosophy  of  religion  [was  completed]  by  1750,  when 
he  was  thirty-nine:  and  after  this  date  he  added  noth- 
ing." The  works  on  religious  philosophy  are  the  "Natu- 
ral History  of  Religion"  and  the  "Dialogues  Concern- 
ing Natural  Religion,"  the  latter  published  posthumously 
by  direction  of  the  author. 

Before  going  on  to  contemplate  Hume  in  the  re- 
mainder of  his  life  and  work,  let  us  stop  for  a  moment 
to  consider  the  general  import  of  the  philosophical  mes- 
sage which  he,  thus  early  in  life,  was  impelled  to  deliver 
to  the  world.  For  a  message  it  was,  containing  a  lesson 
that  stands  written  for  our  instruction,  and  we  shall  be 
wise  if  we  heed  and  inwardly  digest  it. 

The  attempts  of  genuine  philosophers  are  attempts  to 
reduce  to  logical,  intelligible  expression  truth  of  living, 
experimental,  essential  reality.  But  it  is  only  given  to 
philosophic  genius  to  penetrate  and  grasp  and  formulate 
philosophic  truths  of  being,  which,  in  their  essential  sim- 
plicity and  universality,  are  implicitly  held  by  all  men, 
since  they  are  the  life  of  all,  but  which  it  is  given  to  but 
few  to  hold  explicitly  with  the  cool  grasp  and  mastery  of 
clear  reason.  The  power  of  philosophy,  or  its  destiny,  if 
it  has  any  in  the  world,  is  a  power  or  destiny  to  lift  men, 
slowly,  it  may  be,  but  surely  and  irresistibly,  up  to  that 
plane  of  philosophic  insight  on  which  genius  stands. 
Such,  for  example,  has  been  historically  and  still  is  the 
power  of  Platonism.    But  the  very  elevation  of  genius  is 


DAVID   HUME.  243 

one  reason  for  its  not  being  immediately  appreciated.  In 
the  immediate  followers  of  PJato  there  was  an  immense 
falling  away  of  the  essential  thing,  namely,  the  Platonic 
spirit,  or  the  vital  hnoioledge  of  Plato.  Again,  this  very 
conception,  just  expressed,  of  vital  Jcnowledge,  without 
which  I  cannot  admit  that  philosophy  has  any  existence 
except  in  name,  is  a  thing,  between  which  and  such  ab- 
stract definition  of  it,  as  philosophy,  in  view  of  its  scien- 
tific character  and  aim,  must  seek  to  furnish,  there  exists 
such  a  disparity  that  a  philosopher  may  at  times  well 
despair  of  giving  to  his  thought,  and  the  truth  to  which 
his  thought  relates,  perfect,  irrefutable,  all-convincing 
verbal  expression.  Philosophic  truth,  relating  as  it  does 
to  living  power,  intelligence,  act,  is  dynamic,  fluent;  the  \ 
formulae  of  language  are  static,  rigid.  The  former  takes 
hold  on  every  side  of  the  infinite  and  universal,  so  that 
while  there  are  no  significant  words  which  do  not  express  , 
it,  there  are  none  which  exhaust  it.  The  insight  of  phi-  / 
losophic  genius  is  then  anterior  and  superior  to  verbal, 
systematic  expression.  And  yet  the  only  way  by  which 
this  insight  communicates  itself  lies,  and  must  lie, 
through  such  expression.  We  learn  first  the  letter.  It 
is  well  known  that,  and  for  what  reasons,  the  study  and 
criticism  of  the  letter  blinds  the  vision  and  hinders  the 
reception  of  the  spirit.  Were  I  now  to  attempt  to  illus- 
trate this  theme  from  the  history  of  philosophy,  I  might 
produce  a  dissertation  of  interminable  length,  but  full,  I 
think,  of  instruction.  The  history  of  tlie  Platonic  or 
Aristotelian  philosophy  would  furnish  the  most  ample 
materials.  The  point  I  wish  to  make  in  the  present  con- 
nection is  this,  that  the  relation  between  Berkeley  and 
Hume  is  strikingly  like  that  to  which  I  have  just  ad- 


244  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

verted  between  the  spirit  and  the  letter,  between  con- 
structive insight  and  destructive  literal  criticism.  Berke- 
ley, doubtless,  fell  further  short  than  many  another  of 
complete  systematic  expression  of  his  positive  thought. 
Nay,  more,  in  addition  to  the  needless  and  inexcusable 
inadequacy  of  his  systematic  exposition,  we  must  recog- 
nize that  Berkeley,  in  the  inexperience  of  youth  and 
owing  to  circumstances  in  the  philosophical  history  of 
his  times  which  need  not  be  recapitulated,  started  out  on 
a  track,  with  a  method,  with  a  terminology  and  a  set  of 
philosophical  conceptions,  either  absolutely  false  or  mis- 
leading; that  whatever  greatness  he  exhibited  as  a  phi- 
losopher was  principally  in  spite  of  them;  and  that, 
following  and  employing  them,  he  was  led,  in  the  famous 
immaterialism  of  his  youthful  works,  to  enunciate,  as  the 
doctrine  by  which  he  has  been  chiefly  known,  a  theory 
equivocal  in  statement  and  partly  questionable  in  sub- 
stance. I  find  in  Berkeley,  then,  a  singular  and  unusual 
disparateness  between  his  virtual  thought  and  the  mech- 
anism of  statement  and  argument  by  which,  more  or  less 
unintelligently,  he  sought  to  communicate  it.  The  true 
continuator  of  Berkeley,  to  my  thinking,  would  be  he 
who,  neglecting  or  correcting  tins  mechanism,  should  go 
about  to  apprehend  and  develop  the  thought  into  a  com- 
prehensive, reasonable  idealism,  such  as  is  suggested  or 
(of  course  always  imperfectly)  expressed  in  the  leading 
forms  of  philosophic  thought,  of  religious  feeling,  of  ar- 
tistic creation,  and  in  the  universal  life  of  man.  The 
"continuation  "  of  Berkeley,  through  a  process  of  literal 
criticism  and  drawing  of  verbal  inferences,  would  lead  to 
a  very  different  result — to  what  result  we  shall  presently 
see  in  contemplating  Hume's  conclusions. 


DAVID   HUME.  245 

All  are  aware  of  Sydney  Smith's  witty  saying :  "  Bishop 
Berkeley  destroyed  the  world  in  cue  volume  octavo,  and 
nothing  remained  after  his  time  but  mind,  which  experi- 
enced a  similar  fate  from  Mr.  Hume  in  1739."  This  is  a 
verbal  statement  —  only  that  —  of  what  Berkeley  did,  and 
a  literal  statement  of  what  Hume  verbally  accomplished. 
Locke's  presuppositions  and  methods,  developed  and  ap- 
plied by  Berkeley,  led  to  an  apparently  literal  annihila- 
tion, in  theory,  of  the  physical  universe,  but  really,  or  in 
tendency  (namely,  having  regard  to  Berkeley's  intention 
and  spirit),  to  the  retention  of  it,  with  a  new  and  pro- 
founder  significance  substituted  for  the  older  and  vulgar 
one.  Proceeding  on  different  presuppositions  and  by  a 
different  method,  this  appearance  of  literal  annihilation 
might  have  been  avoided.  Hume,  adopting  the  literal, 
and  nominally  destructive,  conclusion  of  Berkeley,  and 
proceeding  on  the  basis  of  the  same  Lockian  data  or  prin- 
ciples, went  on  to  prove  that  the  word  Mind,  as  well  as 
Matter,  had  no  cognizable  or  conceivable  significance. 
Berkeley's  partial  negation  was  in  the  interest  of  a 
grander  affirmation.  Hume's  comprehensive  negation 
was,  as  far  as  he  was  concerned,  final;  it  proclaimed  vir- 
tually, but  effectively,  the  iin potency  and  incompetency  of 
a  certain  method  in  philosophy,  which  is,  nevertheless, 
still  cherished  and  lauded  and  followed  with  astonishing 
pertinacity  on  the  part  of  many ;  it  pointed  to  no  tran- 
scending affirmation,  capable  of  explaining  and  giving 
sense  to  the  negation ;  it  admitted  no  ray  of  a  light  capa- 
ble of  piercing  and  expelling  the  darkness. 

Of  course  nothing  but  a  general  statement  of  the 
reasonings  and  conclusions  of  Hume,  and  of  the  manner 
in  which  they  are  affiliated  to  the  premises  and  results  of 


246  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

his  predecessors,  Locke  and  Berkeley,  is  to  be  here  at- 
tempted. The  following  summary  indications  may  suffice. 
Locke,  having  inaugurated  the  application  of  the  analytic 
and  descriptive  method  in  psychology — the  method  which 
seeks  to  trace  the  phenomenal  growth  of  "mind"  in  the 
life  of  the  individual,  and  so  to  determine  what  mind  is 
and  what  are  the  nature  and  value  of  its  operations  — 
had  drawn  the  speculative  conclusion  that  all  our 
knowledge  is  of  ideas  and  of  their  relations,  whether  of 
agreement  or  of  "  repugnancy."  Ideas  were  looked  on 
as  possessions  of  the  mind,  objects  contained  in  it  as  a 
receptacle,  images  which  might  or  might  not  have  a  rep- 
resentative significance,  as  revelatory  of  existences  inde- 
pendent of  themselves.  One  thing  was  certain  :  they  gave 
no  information  concerning  the  essential  nature  of  either 
matter  or  mind,  of  the  real  existence,  however,  of  which 
two  alleged  forms  of  substances  Locke,  in  agreement  with 
a  prevalent  speculative  opinion  of  his  age,  and  with  the 
vulgar  opinion  of  all  ages,  made  no  serious  doubt.  Berke- 
ley admitted  Locke's  negative  conclusion  as  it  regarded 
matter,  and  went  further,  alleging  that  not  only  do  our 
ideas  bring  us  no  kiioivledge  concerning  matter,  but  that, 
accurately  understood,  they  also  bring  us  not  even  the 
suggestion  of  its  existence :  the  conception  of  matter  is, 
on  the  one  hand,  inherently  unthinkable  and  absurd,  like 
"  wooden  iron " ;  and,  on  the  other,  ideas  are  works  or 
functions  of  mind,  to  which,  therefore,  and  to  which 
alone  they  can  and  do  bear  witness.  We  can,  however 
—  in  this  Berkeley  agrees  with  Locke  —  have  no  idea, 
strictly  speaking,  of  mind,  as  though,  namely,  through 
any  given  idea  were  represented  to  us  the  substantive 
nature  of  mind.     But  we  have  a  notion  of  mind,  as  a 


DAVID    HUME.  247 

power  to  cause  and  receive  ideas,  as  also  to  will  and  to 
feel.  But  this  latter  and  essential  portion  of  Berkeley's 
doctrine  was  unaccountably,  and  we  may,  with  practical 
truth,  say  fatally,  neglected  by  him  (especially  in  his  earliest 
and  best-known  works). 

JNow  Hume,  taking  up  Locke's  maxim  of  the  restric- 
tion of  knowledge  to  ideas  and  their  relations,  applied 
it  in  its  full  rigor.  With  a  change  of  terminology,  partly 
suggested  by  Berkeley,  he  declares  that  "  nothing  is  ever 
present  to  the  mind  but  its  perceptions";  and  "all  the 
perceptions  of  the  human  mind  resolve  themselves  into 
two  distinct  kinds,"  namely,  Impressions  and  Ideas.  Essen- 
tially, howevei',  these  are  not  distinct,  for  ideas  are  only 
"faint  images"  of  impressions.  The  word  impression 
sufficiently  explains  itself;  it  implies,  notably,  that  the 
mind  with  reference  to  them  is  wholly  passive.  All  our 
knowledge  of  "  existence,"  Hume,  then,  is  moved  to  affirm, 
is  a  knowledge  of  impressions  or  "perceptions"  ;  and  by 
the  same  reasoning  by  which  you  prove  that  the  percep- 
tion furnishes  no  cognition  of  matter,  I  prove  (he  declares) 
that  it  furnishes  no  knowledge  of  mind.  There  is  not  a 
peculiar  form  of  knowledge,  such  as  Berkeley  had  distin- 
guished from  perception  under  the  name  of  notion,  and 
whereby  we  have  cognizance  of  the  mind  as  a  spiritual 
power.  We  have  no  knowledge  but  of  perceptions ;  these 
only  are  "present  to  the  mind";  and  perceptions  are  per- 
ceptions, and  nothing  else,  they  are  not  powers:  contem- 
plate your  perceptions  (by  the  method  of  empirical  psy- 
cology,  Hume's  method,  and  the  favorite  one  in  so  much 
of  English  speculation)  eternally,  and  you  will  hit  upon 
no  perception  of  power ;  you  see  no  power,  you  can  find  a 
representative  idea  or  image  of,  no  power;  therefore  you 


248  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKEUS. 

know  no  power,  whether  spiritual  or  material:  the  mind, 
says  Hume,  reveals  itself  only  as  a  *'  bundle  or  collection 
of  different  perceptions,  which  succeed  each  other  with 
an  inconceivable  rapidity,  and  are  in  a  perpetual  flux  or 
movement."  And  again,  "  the  true  idea  of  the  human 
mind  is  to  consider  it  as  a  system  of  different  perceptions 
or  different  existences."  Each  perception  is  a  separate 
unit,  numerically  and  absolutely  independent  of  all  others. 
The  mind  may,  therefore,  in  agreement  with  Hiime's  in- 
tention, be  compared  to  a  row  of  beads  without  a  string. 
They  do  indeed  arrange  themselves  in  a  certain  order, 
according  to  certain  laws  of  mechanical  association  which 
Hume  states  but  professes  his  utter  inability  to  explain. 
The  fundamental  fact  remains  that  they  are  —  so  em- 
pirical psychology  declares,  which,  looking  at  appearances, 
reports  the  dynamical  as  statical,  the  continuous  as 
discrete  —  "distinct  existences,"  and  that  between  such 
the  mind  "  never  perceives  any  real  connexion."  From 
hence  follow  two  weighty,  but  negative,  conclusions, 
openly  avowed  and  strongly  enforced  by  Hume,  namely, 
that,  so  far  as  we  are  scientifically  authorized  to  affirm, 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  personal  identity,  and  that  the 
relation  of  cause  and  effect,  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
regard  as  necessary,  is  not  necessary,  but  casual :  "  anything 
can  be  the  cause  of  [i.e.  can  be  followed  by]  anything." 
Our  belief  in  causation  or  real  connection  is  due  only  to 
habit  or  association,  on  observing,  experimentally,  that  cer- 
tain perceptions  are  frequently  or,  as  far  as  we  can  judge, 
always  followed  by  certain  others.  All  belief  is  due  only 
to  original  vividness  or  acquired  intensity  of  impression. 
"  When  I  am  convinced  of  any  principle,  'tis  only  an  idea, 


DAVID   HUME.  249 

which  strikes  more  strongly  upon  me."     The  source  of  all 
logical  persuasion  is  "feeling." 

If  the  attention  excited  by  Hume's  Treatise,  in  which 
the  foregoing  views  are  set  forth  with  great  detail,  fell 
mortifyingly  short  of  the  author's  eager  hope  and  expec- 
tation, the  student  of  the  subsequent  history  of  philoso- 
phy is  aware  that  in  later  times  Hume's  reasonings  have 
had  a  most  influential  effect  upon  the  course  both  of 
British  and  of  continental  speculation.  His  views,  some- 
what differently  dressed  and  argued,  have  given  tone  to 
the  utterances  of  many  of  the  most  brilliant  (or  at  least 
loquacious)  leaders  of  English  thought,  and  it  is  well 
known  that,  before  Hume's  death,  his  criticism  of  the 
common  conception  of  causation  struck  in  the  mind  of 
Kant  a  spark  which  set  the  whole  thinking  world  in 
flames,  and  fixed  an  indelible  impression  upon  the  whole 
bearing  of  the  philosophy  of  our  times.  Just  what  Hume 
tliought  of  his  own  performance  it  were  perhaps  difficult 
to  determine,  though  he  doubtless  would  have  said  of 
much  of  his  reasoning,  what  he  declared  concerning 
Berkeley's,  that  it  admitted  of  no  reply,  and  produced  no 
conviction.  Of  this  there  is  no  doubt,  that  he  was  firm 
in  the  determination,  whatever  might  be  the  worth  or 
fate  of  his  philosophy,  to  establish  his  reputation  as  a 
literary  artist,  and  the  concluding  section  of  the  first 
book  of  the  Treatise  ("Of  the  Understanding")  affords  a 
striking  example  of  such  art.  Here  Hume  strikes  an  atti- 
tude. He  contemplates  the  unhopeful  result  of  his  inves- 
tigations. "When  I  turn  my  eye  inward,  I  find  nothing 
but  doubt  and  ignorance."  "The  understanding,  when 
it  acts  alone,  and  according  to  its  most  general  principles, 
entirely  subverts  itself,  and  leaves  not  the  lowest  degree 


250  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

of  evidence  in  any  proposition,  either  in  philosophy  or 
common  life."  "  We  have,  therefore,  no  choice  left  but 
betwixt  a  false  reason  and  none  at  all."  These  are  Hume's 
words,  whereupon  he  affects  to  find  his  brain  heated,  his 
mind  confounded,  and  to  "fancy"  himself  "in  the  most 
deplorable  condition  imaginable,  environ'd  with  the  deep- 
est darkness,  and  utterly  depriv'd  of  the  use  of  every 
member  and  faculty."  A  "splenetic  humour"  is  induced. 
"  I  dine,  I  play  a  game  of  backgammon,  I  converse  and 
am  merry  with  my  friends;  and  when,  after  three  or  four 
hours'  amusement,  I  wou'd  return  to  these  speculations, 
they  appear  so  cold,  and  strain'd,  and  ridiculous  that  I 
cannot  find  in  my  heart  to  enter  into  them  any  further." 
On  the  whole,  he  concludes,  "nature"  (an  obscure  entity, 
Hume's  Deus  ex  machina,  which  he  often  calls  to  the 
rescue,  but  never  is  able  to  define  or  exphiin),  prompting 
to  relaxation  after  the  common  manner  of  mankind,  must 
be  indulged.  Let  "good  humour,"  above  all,  be  main- 
tained. If  the  impulse  to  speculation,  to  investigation  of 
the  "science  of  man,"  shall  return,  let  it  be  obeyed;  if 
not,  well  and  good.  To  study  "  philosophy  in  this  careless 
manner"  is,  he  judges,  the  most  philosophical  way  of 
studying  it,  because  it  is  the  most  sceptical.  Whatever 
conclusions  are  reached,  and  however  absurd,  they  are  in- 
nocent. "Generally  speaking,"  says  Hume,  "  the  errors  in 
religion  are  dangerous,  those  in  philosophy  only  ridicu- 
lous." 

The  remaining  two  books  of  Hume's  Treatise  corre- 
spond to  the  foregoing  beginning.  In  the  one  of  them 
the  mechanism  of  passion  is  illustrated.  In  the  other  the 
attempt  is  made  to  set  forth  morality  as  exclusively  a 
phenomenon  of  the  passional  side  of  our  nature.     Moral 


DAVID    HUME.  251 

distinctions  are  not  founded  in  reason.  The  theory  "  that 
vice  and  virtue  consist  in  relations  susceptible  of  certainty 
and  demonstrations"  is  combated.  "Reason,"  says  Hume, 
"is,  and  ought  to  be,  the  slave  of  the  passions,  and  can 
never  pretend  to  any  other  office  but  to  serve  and  obey 
them."  Moral  distinctions  are  affairs  of  sentiment,  or 
impression,  or  feeling,  alone.  Virtue  is  known  by  its  gen- 
erally producing  pleasure  (more  particulary  the  pleasure 
of  "love  or  pride"),  and  vice  by  its  giving  rise  to  a  feeling 
of  "uneasiness"  ("humility  or  hatred  ").  Virtuous  actions 
may  also  be  recognized  by  their  utility.  The  ground  of 
our  approbation  of  them  is  found  by  Hume  largely  in 
sympathy.  Though  Hume  inveighs  in  the  loudest  terms 
against  the  notion  that  self-love  is  the  dominant  passion 
in  human  nature,  and  the  key  to  all  moral  distinctions, 
yet  the  general  kinship  of  his  ethics,  in  principle,  to  the 
ethics  of  selfishness  becomes  instantly  obvious  on  reflec- 
tion. We  are  confronted  with  an  analysis  of  the  mechan- 
ism of  passion,  and  not  with  an  ideal  of  duty  and  privi- 
lege, dictated  both  by  reason  and  feeling,  and  addressed 
to  free  and  rational  and  responsible  agents. 

A  word  may  be  in  place  concerning  a  couple  of  famous 
points  in  Hume's  religious  philosophy.  The  well-known 
argument  against  miracles  —  namely,  their  opposition  to 
uniform  experience  —  follows,  irrespective  of  other  non- 
essential considerations  developed  by  Hume,  from  exactly 
the  same  premises  which  disprove,  in  Hume's  view,  the 
personal  identity  and  essential,  creative  freedom  of  man. 
If  the  premises  are  false,  the  conclusion  —  whether,  for 
other  reasons,  correct  or  incorrect  —  cannot  be  properly 
derived  from  and  supported  on  them.  A  miracle  (so- 
called)  implies  spiritual,  free,  i.e.  real,  causation,  the  act, 


252  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

immediate  or  mediate,  of  intelligent  power.  Now  Hume, 
on  general  grounds,  denies  such  causation  and  sucii,  or 
any  other,  power,  or,  at  least,  the  possibility  of  our  having 
any  knowledge  or  conception  of  them.  Hence  he  must 
deny  or  explain  away  any  alleged  evidence  of  real  causa- 
tive power,  as  well  on  the  part  of  divine  as  of  human 
beings.  From  Hume's  doctrine  concerning  causation 
follows,  with  like  necessity,  his  noted  objection  to  the 
argument  for  God's  existence,  drawn  from  the  alleged  ne- 
cessity of  finding  a  cause  for  the  existence  of  the  world 
considered  as  a  whole.  We  are  authorized,  according  to 
Hume,  to  affirm  causation  only  in  cases  of  sequence  hab- 
itually observed.  An  erent  which  we  generally  find  fol- 
lowing ajter  another  is  termed  the  effect  of  the  latter. 
We  must  see  the  nominal  effect  following  the  nominal 
cause  many  times  before  we  can  conclude  (by  what  is 
even  then  at  best  only  an  arbitrary  "determination  of  the 
mind,"  in  Hume's  phrase)  that  a  causal  relation  subsists 
between  the  two.  But  now  we  have  had  no  experience  of 
the  creation  of  worlds.  Besides,  the  world  is,  by  hypothe- 
sis, one.  If  caused,  it  was  only  caused  once.  It  is  an 
"unique  effect,"  if  indeed  it  is  an  effect  at  all.  Had  we 
seen  the  world  once  come  into  existence  upon  the  utter- 
ance of  the  creative  word,  we  should  not  be  entitled  by 
our  (Hume's)  principles  to  conclude  that  it  was  the  effect 
of  such  word.  We  must  witness  this  habitually  in  order 
to  infer  that  it  is  a  case  of  (at  least  probable)  causation. 
The  argument  is  easy  for  Hume,  his  premises,  i.e.  his 
views  concerning  causation  being  granted;  its  conclusive- 
ness is  as  questionable  as  is  the  soundness  of  the  prem- 
ises. Nay,  more,  its  obvious,  even  laughable,  absurdity 
makes  of  it  a  glaringly  typical  illustration  of  the  dispar- 


DAVID   HUME.  263 

ateness  between  the  method  of  empirical,  sensational 
psychology  and  philosophical  speculation  and  insight. 
We  have  seen  this  method,  under  Baconian  inspiration, 
coming  into  use  as  an  instrument  of  ostensibly  philo- 
sophical investigation  in  the  hands  of  Hobbes  and  Locke, 
and  partially  and,  so  to  speak,  incidentally  applied  by 
Berkeley.  Hume  now  applies  it  with  exclusive  and  abso- 
lute rigor. 

"What  is  the  essence  of  this  method?  It  is  professedly 
a  method  of  "  pure  observation."  What  is  to  be  ob- 
served ?  Consciousness.  What  is  consciousness  in  the 
light  of  such  observation  ?  It  is  a  moving  panorama, 
from  the  observer's  personal  participation  in  moving  or 
perceiving  which  abstraction  is  made.  This  is  a,  2^ossible, 
but  abstract  and  fatally  incomplete,  conception  of  con- 
sciousness. It  is  just  such  a  conception  as  that  which 
physical  science,  following  its  mathematico-mechanical 
ideal  of  method,  forms  of  its  objects.  It,  too,  looks  upon 
the  world  as  a  panorama,  a  moving  spectacle,  and  its  high- 
est theoretical  aim  is  to  ascertain  just  what  appears  {i.e. 
just  what  is  or  may  imaginably  be  presented  to  sensible 
observation).  It  does  not,  therefore,  nor,  when  conscious 
of  its  true  aim  and  real  limitations,  does  it  seek  to  deter- 
mine aught  concerning  that  which  lies  behind  and  is  the 
final  explanation  of  appearance.  It  knows  observable 
motions,  but  not  unseen  forces,  and  sensible  "configura- 
tion," but  not  real  (whether  material  or  spiritual)  sub- 
stance. 

Now,  British  empirical  psychology,  deriving  its  model 
of  method  from  physical  "inductive"  science,  naturally 
arrives  by  it  at  results  analogous  to  those  reached  by 
physical  science.     It  furnishes  a  more  or  less  admirable 


254  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

description  of  the  field  of  conscious  phenomena,  with  their 
rules  of  coexistence  and  sequence.  But  it  does  not  go 
behind  them,  objectively  or  subjectively.  Naturally,  as 
physical  science  finds  no  "force"  among  the  subjects  of 
its  analytic  observation,  so  empirical  psychology  "hits 
upon  "  no  "  power  "  among  conscious  phenomena.  As,  for 
the  former,  the  word  causation  has  only  the  secondary, 
emasculated  meaning  of  sensible  succession  of  phenom- 
ena (or,  in  the  last  resort,  mathematical  equivalence  of 
successive  phenomena,  excluding  the  notion  of  efficiency), 
so  it  has  the  same  meaning  for  the  latter.  And  as,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  former,  the  terms  matter,  mind, 
substance,  have  no  definable  signification,  so  also  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  latter. 

Hume,  then,  was  perfectly  right  in  drawing  these 
negative  conclusions.  The  notion  of  power,  which  strictly 
and  ultimately  is  ideal  or  spiritual,  and  not  sensible  or 
physical  (see  above,  chapter  on  Shakespeare),  is  not  given 
as  an  idea,  image,  or  phenomenon  of  sensible  or  panoramic 
consciousness,  nor,  consequently,  is  the  notion  of  personal 
identity  or  self,  which  is  indissolubly  bound  up  therewith. 
The  like  observations,  and  on  similar  grounds,  may  be 
made  concerning  causation  and  substance.  Any  attempt 
to  find  answers  to  the  questions  relating  to  all  these 
subjects  (and  these  are  all  strictly  philosophical  ques- 
tions, relating,  as  they  do,  to  subjects  of  vital  and  ulti- 
mate reality),  among  the  phenomena  of  sensible,  imagina- 
tive consciousness,  necessarily  fails,  since  the  subjects  of 
such  inquiry  are  utterly  incommensurate  with,  and,  from 
the  very  nature  of  things,  absent  from,  such  conscious- 
ness. Hume's  defect  lay,  therefore,  not  in  the  erroneous- 
ness  of  his   negative   or   "sceptical"   conclusions,  thus 


DAVID   HUME.  255 

viewed  with  reference  to  the  premises  of  presupposition 
and  method  on  which  they  were  founded,  but  in  fancy- 
ing that  these  premises  were  in  the  slightest  degree  ger- 
mane to  philosophical  questions,  and  that  no  others  were 
to  be  found.  His  merit  is  that,  inheriting  this  fancy  — 
or,  rather,  this  prejudice  —  from  his  predecessors,  he  was 
more  thorough-going  and  consistent  than  others  in  de- 
veloping its  theoretical  consequences. 

The  consciousness  contemplated  by  empirical  psychol- 
ogy is  static,  spectacular,  sensible.  This  is  the  inanimate 
hull,  not  the  living  kernel  of  real  consciousness,  which 
is  dynamic,  dramatic,  rational.  The  former  is  and  must 
be  contemplated  essentially  as  a  succession  of  lifeless 
images  or  pictures;  the  latter  is  vital,  self-illuminating, 
rational  activity.  The  elements  of  the  former  are  ^'states 
of  consciousness,"  passive  "feelings,"  while  those  of  the 
latter  are  acts.  The  former  are  opaque  "impressions" 
which  reveal  no  objective  reality  that  produces  and  no 
subjective  reality  that  receives  or  perceives  them.  The 
latter  are  translucent  with  the  light  of  self-conscious, 
active  reason.  The  former  are  sensible,  the  latter  intel- 
ligible. The  former  are  observed,  the  latter  are,  in  the 
fullest,  deepest  sense  of  the  word,  experienced;  for  here 
act  and  self-conscious  agent  are  inseparable.  It  is  in 
the  self-revealing  and  self-possessing  spiritual  ego,  as  the 
type,  given  to  the  most  immediate  consciousness,  of  ideal 
{i.e.  genuine)  power  and  reality  —  or,  in  other  words,  it 
is  in  dynamic  self-consciousness,  where  phenomenon  is 
merged  in  reality  —  that  the  key  is  furnished  for  the 
solution  of  strictly  philosophic  questions,  or  questions  of 
vital  reality.  It  is  here  that  the  notions  of  power,  cause, 
unity,  substance,  are  illustrated,  not  in  appearance  merely, 


256  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

but  in  reality.  And  here,  it  is  needless  to  state,  they 
appear  in  their  true  light,  utterly  separated  from  sensi- 
ble analogies.  Causation,  in  particular,  appears  not  as 
sensible  succession,  but  as  the  realization  of  rational 
will. 

To  return,  now,  to  the  question  of  the  "  creation "  or 
causation  of  the  world,  from  the  passing  consideration 
of  Hume's  arguments  concerning  which  this  long  ex- 
pository digression  set  out,  it  is  obvious  that,  if  the  ques- 
tion has  any  relevancy  or  pertinency  at  all,  it  is  a  rational 
and  not  a  physical  question,  philosophical  and  not  "scien- 
tific." Physical  causation  is  succession  within  the  limits 
of  the  sensible  universe  as  already  existing  and  presented 
to  empirical  consciousness.  The  causation  of  the  world 
can  be  no  such  process,  unless  "God"  be  conceived  after 
sensible  analogies  and  so  made  a  part  (an  unique  part, 
it  is  true)  of  the  universe,  the  "origin"  of  which  is  in 
question.  In  this  case,  God,  a  phenomenal  existence,  is 
conceived  as  uttering  his  word,  which  phenomenon  is 
then  followed  by  another  phenomenon,  namely,  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  whole  universe  except  God.  Hume's 
argument  (as  we  saw)  is,  that  we  must  witness  this  literal 
succession  repeatedly,  "habitually,"  before  we  can  regard 
it  as  a  case  of  causation.  His  premises  and  his  argu- 
ments are  good,  if  physical  conceptions  are  to  dominate 
philosophical  inquiry,  or,  in  other  words,  if  physical  con- 
ceptions are  ultimate  conceptions.  But,  I  repeat,  the 
obvious  absurdity  of  both  premise  and  argument  shows 
that  the  question  at  issue  is  not  a  subject  of  "scientific" 
consideration  at  all,  but  of  rational  or  philosophical  in- 
quiry. The  question,  how  to  account  for  the  sensible 
universe  is  wholly  irrespective  of  time  or  succession.     It 


DAVID   HUME.  257 

concerns  no  more  one  moment  of  its  existence  (the 
"beginning")  than  any  other  (the  present,  for  example). 
It  is  purely  a  timeless  question  of  nature  and  dependence, 
and  is  answered  when  it  is  shown  that  the  sensible  side 
of  the  universe  is  purely  dependent  and  relatively  un- 
real ;  that  the  universe  has  also  an  intelligihle  side,  by 
which  alone  it  takes  hold  on  power  and  life  and  reality; 
that,  regarded  on  this  side,  it  is  the  scene  of  order  and 
ministrant  to  goodness  and  beauty;  and  that  these  ele- 
ments in  its  life,  which  alone  mark  it  as,  and  render  it, 
intelligible,  are  unthinkable  except  as  ever-present  tokens, 
products,  "effects,"  of  ever-present,  ever-active,  spiritual, 
divine  power.  (Compare,  again,  chapter  on  Shakespeare.) 
In  1742  Hume  published  the  first  installment  of  his 
Essays,  Moral  and  Political.  "  The  work,"  says  Hume, 
"  was  favorably  received,  and  soon  made  me  entirely  for- 
get my  former  disappointment."  In  1744  he  was  an  ap- 
plicant, through  his  friends,  for  an  appointment  as  pro- 
fessor of  "ethics  and  pneumatic  philosophy"  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Edinburgh,  but  unsuccessfully.  In  1745  he 
went  to  be  a  sort  of  moral  guardian  ("  bear-leader,"  as 
Prof.  Huxley  happily  phrases  it)  to  the  marquis  of  An- 
nandale,  a  young  nobleman  infirm  in  mind  and  body. 
At  the  expiration  of  a  year  the  situation  became  unen- 
durable, and  Hume  retired,  improved  in  fortune  if  not  in 
temper.  In  May,  1746,  Hume  accepted  an  appointment, 
which  he  termed  a  "very  genteel"  one,  as  secretary  to 
General  St.  Clair,  in  command  of  an  expedition  intended 
for  Canada,  but  subsequently  diverted  to  the  coast  of 
France.  To  this  appointment  was  added  the  office  of 
judge-advocate.     The  expedition  soon  ended  in  disaster. 

Hume,  however,  had   made  new  friends,  not  the  least 
11* 


258  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

among  whom  was  General  St.  Clair  himself,  who  in  the 
following  year  invited  him  to  attend  him  upon  a  military 
embassy  to  the  courts  of  Vienna  and  Turin.  Hume 
accepted  With  the  more  readiness  because  he  had  for 
some  time  had  it  in  mind  to  apply  himself  to  historical 
writing,  and  judged  that  the  acquaintance  with  men  and 
courts  and  countries,  which  he  should  thus  acquire,  would 
further  him  in  this  aim.  Dressed  as  an  aide-de-camp,  in 
the  uniform  of  an  officer,  Hume,  who  was  fat  and  burly, 
cut  an  odd  and  amusing  figure,  which  he  himself  good- 
naturedly  recognized.  Two  years  were  passed  on  this 
mission,  on  returning  from  which  Hume  exulted  in  being 
"master  of  near  a  thousand  pounds."  He  returned  to 
Ninewells  and  busied  himself  with  literary  labors,  some 
of  which  have  been  already  referred  to,  but  the  most  im- 
mediately successful  of  which  resulted  in  his  Political 
Discourses  —  the  second  installment  of  his  Essays.  These 
Discourses  were  very  favorably  received  and  gave  Hume 
at  once  a  European  reputation,  being  twice  translated, 
within  a  year,  into  French.  In  consequence  of  them 
Hume  has  been  ranked  as  a  pioneer  in  political  science. 
They  are  marked  by  the  application  of  strong  matter-of- 
fact  sense  to  the  facts  of  politics.  But  they  do  not  and 
were  not  intended  to  constitute  a  system. 

In  1751  Hume  removed  to  Edinburgh,  and  in  the  fol- 
lowing year  set  himself  up  in  house-keeping,  and  "com- 
pleted," says  he,  in  a  letter  written  about  this  time,  "a 
regular  family;  consisting  of  a  head,  namely,  myself,  and 
two  inferior  members,  a  maid  and  a  cat.  My  sister  has 
.  .  .  joined  me,  and  keeps  me  company."  Hume  con- 
tinues, characteristically;  "With  frugality  I  can  reach,  I 
find,  cleanliness,  warmth,  light,  plenty,  and  contentment. 


DAVID   HUME.  259 

What  would  you  have  more  ?  Independence  ?  I  have  it 
in  a  supreme  degree.  Honour?  that  is  not  altogether 
wanting.  Grace?  that  will  come  in  time.  A  wife?  that 
is  none  of  the  indispensable  requisites  of  life.  Books? 
that  is  one  of  them;  and  I  have  more  than  I  can  use." 
Hume  had,  namely,  though  unsuccessful  in  his  pursuit,  a 
second  time,  of  a  University  professorship  (this  time  the 
professorship  of  logic  in  the  University  of  Glasgow),  se- 
cured his  election  to  the  office  of  librarian  to  the  Faculty 
of  Advocates,  a  position  of  little  pecuniary  value,  but 
which  placed  a  library  of  thirty  thousand  volumes  at  his 
disposal.  His  election  was  contested  on  the  ground  of 
his  religious  opinions.  His  success  elated  him  greatly, 
and  he  ascribed  it  (in  a  characteristic  and  playfully  jubi- 
lant letter)  in  great  measure  to  the  violent  advocacy  of 
his  cause  by  the  ladies.  He  was  now  in  a  position  to  de- 
vote himself  to  his  project  of  historical  composition.  In 
this,  as  in  all  the  work  of  his  pen,  a  motive  of  literary 
ambition  held  a  strong  place.  English  literature  had  no 
great  historian,  combining  "style,  impartiality,  judgment, 
care,"  and  he  would  supply  the  deficiency.  Accordingly 
he  set  himself  about  writing  the  history  of  England  (as 
has  been  said)  "backwards."  In  the  fall  of  1754  he  had 
ready  for  the  world  the  first  volume,  "  containing  the 
reign  of  James  I  and  Charles  I."  His  purpose  to  achieve 
an  artistic  triumph  Hume  undoubtedly  accomplished. 
In  order  to  do  this  he  chose,  with  correct  artistic  percep- 
tion, the  role  of  the  defender  and  eulogist  of  unfortunate 
royalty,  although  his  professed  political  principles  would 
more  naturally  have  inclined  him  to  the  opposite  side. 
Accurate  and  prolonged  investigation  was  not  necessary 
for  his  end,  and  he  allowed  but  little  time  for  it.    But  on 


260  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

the  work  of  composition  he  bestowed  the  utmost  care. 
In  the  published  specimens  of  portions  of  the  extant 
manuscript  of  his  historical  and  other  works  the  chips 
of  the  literary  sculptor  lie  all  along  the  route,  in  the  form 
of  words  and  phrases  erased  and  changed,  and  sometimes 
changed  again  and  again,  until  the  expression  finally  sat- 
is6ed  him.  Lord  Brougham,  in  his  life  of  Hume,  accord- 
ingly denies  to  Hume  the  possession  of  the  "cardinal 
virtues"  of  the  historian,  "fidelity,  research,  and  accu- 
racy," but  considers  that  if  we  "turn  to  the  secondary 
accomplishments  of  tlie  historian,  we  can  hardly  find  ex- 
pressions too  strong  to  delineate"  his  merit.  His  History 
abounds  in  the  "  strokes  of  a  master's  pencil,  and  beauties 
such  as  .  .  .  would  make  this  the  first  of  histories,  if  the 
grace  of  form  could  atone  for  the  defect  of  substance." 
The  reception  of  the  first  volume  of  the  History  of  Eng- 
land by  the  public  was  far  from  gratifying  to  Hume.  His 
"disappointment"  was  "miserable."  Scarcely  any  one, 
of  whatever  party  in  church  or  state,  could  endure  it. 
Only  the  primate  of  England  and  the  primate  of  Ireland, 
"two  odd  exceptions,"  as  Hume  observes,  signified  to  him 
their  satisfaction.  "These  dignified  prelates  separately 
sent  me  messages  not  to  be  discouraged."  Hume  was  not 
discouraged,  but  continued  at  work,  still  residing  mostly 
at  Edinburgh,  and  published  the  remaining  (for  the  most 
part,  chronologically  earlier)  portions  of  his  history  in 
1756,  1759,  and  17G1.  He  found  time  also  in  1757  to 
superintend  the  publication  of  his  Natural  History  of 
Religion. 

By  this  time  Hume,  through  his  books,  "  was  become," 
as  he  with  a  pardonable  sense  of  satisfaction  mentions, 
"not  only  independent  but  opulent,"  and  was  about  de- 


DAVID   HUME.  261 

termining  to  pass  the  remainder  of  his  life  in  philo- 
sophical contentment,  in  Scotland,  when,  in  1763,  he  ac- 
cepted the  urgent  invitation  of  Lord  Hertford  to  accom- 
pany him  on  his  embassy  to  Paris.  Hume's  reception 
on  the  part  of  men  of  letters  and  the  fashionable  society 
at  Paris  was  overwhelming.  He  became  the  manie  domi- 
nante  in  fashionable  circles.  "  The  *  Honest  David  Hume ' 
of  Dr.  Carlyle  and  the  Edinburgh  club  was  the  'bon 
David'  of  the  French  salons.''^  The  presence  of  the  " gros 
et  grand  philosophe  "  was  indispensable  at  every  fete,  at 
all  the  " soupers  fins."  Hume  received  all  these  atten- 
tions with  much  complacency,  and  was  chiefly  pleased 
"to  find,"  says  he,  "that  most  of  the  eulogiums  bestowed 
on  me  turned  on  my  personal  character,  my  naivete 
and  simplicity  of  manners,  the  candour  and-'mildness  of 
my  disposition,  etc."  Perhaps  also  his  hatred  of  the 
English,  which  became  in  the  end  quite  unutterable, 
had  something  to  do  with  his  popularity.  London 
was,  in  his  view,  the  precise  opposite  of  Paris,  where, 
he  says,  "a  man  that  distinguishes  himself  in  letters 
meets  immediately  with  regard  and  attention."  Paris, 
in  his  judgment,  abounded  in  "sensible,  knowing  and 
polite  company"  "above  all  places  in  the  universe,"  and 
he  felt  strongly  tempted  to  settle  there  for  life.  It  is  im- 
portant to  note  concerning  Hume,  and  the  observation 
may  pertinently  be  introduced  in  this  connection,  that, 
somewhat  as  in  morals  he  viewed  virtue  and  vice  in 
their  quality  as  "artificial"  products  (Treatise  III,  1,  2), 
so  in  affairs  of  taste  it  was  the  overdressed  art  of  rule 
and  reflection  which  attracted  him.  The  wild  beauty 
of  Gothic  architecture  was  to  him  a  monument  of  medi- 
aeval rudeness.      In  writing  of  his  visit  to  Cologne  he 


262  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

made  no  mention  of  the  cathedral.  The  incomparable 
native  force,  and  art  above  all  arts,  of  Shakespeare,  was 
for  him  (as  for  Voltaire)  barbarism.  Shakespeare,  though 
a  prodigy  in  his  time,  would  not  be  so  considered  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  a  poet  must  be  "capable  of 
furnishing  a  proper  entertainment  to  a  refined,  intelli- 
gent audience."  Sophocles,  and  Racine,  whom  he  agreed 
with  the  French  in  regarding  as  the  modern  successor 
of  the  Greek  dramatist,  were  the  only  proper  models  of 
taste.  Hume  was  therefore  at  home  in  the  artificial 
overculture  of  the  Paris  of  the  eighteenth  century.  He 
enjoyed  here  the  friendship,  especially,  of  such  men  of 
letters  as  "D'Alembert,  Buffon,  Marmontel,  Diderot, 
Duclos,  Helv^tius,  old  President  H^nault,"  although, 
sceptic  and  free  thinker  as  he  was,  some  of  them  laughed 
at  him  for  his  comparative  "narrowness.*'  But,  early  in 
1766,  he  returned  to  London  and  subsequently  to  his 
Presbyterian  and  other  friends  in  Edinburgh,  with  whom 
during- his  absence  he  had  kept  up  a  constant  corre- 
spondence. He  brought  with  him  to  England,  Rousseau, 
his  subsequent  dispute  with  whom  is  famous  in  the 
"  quarrels  of  authors."'  There  was,  indeed,  little  in  com- 
mon between  the  morbidly  sensitive  temperament  of 
Rousseau,  whom  Hume  compared  to  a  man  "stript  not 
only  of  his  clothes  but  of  his  skin,  and  turned  out  in  that 
situation  to  combat  with  the  rude  and  boisterous  ele- 
ments, such  as  perpetually  disturb  this  lower  world," 
and  the  phlegmatic,  even-tempered  good-nature  and 
practical  sense  of  the  Scotch  philosopher. 

Again,  in  1707,  Hume  was  called  away  from  his  home 
by  an  invitation,  which  he  deemed  it  impossible  to  de- 
cline, to  act  as  Under  Secretary  of  State  to  Mr.  Conway, 


DAVID   HUME.  263 

at  London.  In  1769  he  returned  to  Edinburgh,  "very 
opulent,"  says  he  "(for  I  possessed  a,  revenue  of  one 
thousand  pounds  a  year),  healthy,  and  though  somewhat 
stricken  in  years,  with  the  prospect  of  enjoying  long  my 
ease,  and  of  seeing  the  increase  of  my  reputation." 
Hume's  literary  labors  were  ended.  He  had  accomplished, 
with  steady,  patient  purpose,  all  his  ambitions.  Hence- 
forth he  could  live  at  ease,  surrounded  by  friends  and 
giving  them  pleasure,  among  other  ways,  by  generous 
exhibitions  of  his  "great  talent  for  cooking,  the  science," 
as  he  says  in  a  playful  letter,  "to  which  I  intend  to  addict 
the  remaining  years  of  my  life."  His  quarters  being  too 
contracted  for  this  purpose,  he  built  in  the  following  year, 
1770,  the  first  house  in  a  new  street,  which  rather  oddly 
was  called,  after  him,  "St.  David's  street." 

In  spring,  1775,  he  was  attacked  by  a  disease  which  at 
first  gave  him  no  alarm,  but  which,  several  months  before 
his  death,  he  recognized  as  "mortal  and  incurable."  He 
made  his  will,  settled  up  all  his  affairs,  made  a  journey 
to  London  and  Batii  without  receiving,  permanently,  the 
hoped-for  improvement  of  his  health,  and  returned  to 
Edinburgh.  Here  he  looked  forward  to  his  approaching 
dissolution  apparently  with  the  most  absolute  calmness 
and  cheerfulness,  never  impatient,  except,  perhaps,  at  the 
delay  of  the  painful  close  of  his  life's  drama,  and  always 
affectionate  and  tender.  Thus  testifies  the  physician  in 
attendance  on  him  at  his  death,  who  adds,  "When  he  be- 
came very  weak  it  cost  him  an  effort  to  speak,  and  he  died 
in  such  a  happy  composure  of  mind  that  nothing  could  ex- 
ceed it."  This  event  occurred  on  the  25th  of  August,  1776. 

Hume  ends  his  short  autobiography  with  the  following 
estimate  of  his  own  character : 


264  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

"  To  conclude  historically  with  my  own  character.  I  am,  or  rather 
was  (for  that  is  the  style  I  must  now  use  in  speaking  of  myself,  which 
emboldens  me  the  more  to  speak  my  sentiments),  I  was,  I  say,  a 
man  of  mild  dispositions,  of  command  of  temper,  of  an  open,  social 
and  cheerful  humour,  capable  of  attachment,  but  little  susceptible  of 
enmity,  and  of  great  moderation  in  all  my  passions.  Even  my  love 
of  literary  fame,  my  ruling  passion,  never  soured  my  temper,  not- 
withstanding my  frequent  disappointments.  My  company  was  not 
unacceptable  to  the  young  and  careless,  as  well  as  to  the  studious 
and  literary;  and  as  I  took  a  particular  pleasure  in  the  company  of 
modest  women,  I  had  no  reason  to  be  displeased  with  the  reception 
I  met  with  from  them.  In  a  word,  though  most  men  anywise  emi- 
nent have  found  reason  to  complain  of  calumny,  I  never  was  touched 
or  even  attacked  by  her  baleful  tooth,  and  though  I  wantonly  ex- 
posed myself  to  the  rage  of  both  civil  and  religious  factions,  they 
seemed  to  be  disarmed  in  my  behalf  of  their  wonted  fury.  My 
friends  never  had  occasion  to  vindicate  any  one  circumstance  of  my 
character  and  conduct;  not  but  that  the  zealots,  we  may  well  sup- 
pose, would  have  been  glad  to  invent  and  propagate  any  story  to 
my  disadvantage,  but  they  could  never  find  any  which  they  thought 
would  wear  the  face  of  probability.  I  cannot  say  there  is  no  vanity 
in  making  this  funeral  oration  of  myself,  but  I  hope  it  is  not  a  mis- 
placed one;  and  this  is  a  matter  of  fact  which  is  easily  cleared  and 
ascertained." 

From  this,  charity,  the  very  bond  of  perfectness,  has 
nothing  to  subtract.  Silent  concerning  errors,  it  has 
nothing  to  add  to  it,  unless  it  be  the  tribute  of  a  grateful 
recognition  of  the  fact,  which  blinds  to  all  errors,  that 
David  Hume  was  a  man  whom  the  friends  that  knew  him 
heartily  loved. 

His  tombstone  bears  this  inscription : 

David  Hume. 

Born  1711.    Died  1766. 

lkavinq  it  to  posterity  to  add  the  kest. 


CHAPTER  X. 

SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON. 

The  most  influential  current  of  British  speculation 
in  tlie  eighteenth  century  and  in  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  flowed  through  Scotch  minds.  One  of  these, 
David  Hume,  a  fascinating  puzzle  to  his  contemporaries, 
and  a  kindling  spark  to  subsequent  European  thought, 
we  contemplated  in  the  last  chapter.  Another  of  them, 
than  whom,  according  to  the  testimony  of  his  adversary 
and  critic,  John  Stuart  Mill,  "among  the  philosophical 
writers  of  the  present  century  in  [the  British]  islands, 
no  one  occupies  a  higher  position,"  presents  himself  fov 
our  present  consideration  —  Sir  William  Hamilton. 
Among  the  names  of  Scotch  thinkers  omitted  from  this 
review  of  "  British  Thought  and  Thinkers,"  are  several 
whom  it  were  well  worth  the  while  to  contemplate  sep- 
arately. I  name,  for  example,  Francis  Hutcheson,  Adam 
Smith  and  Thomas  Reid,  all  successively  professors  of 
moral  philosophy  in  the  university  at  Glasgow;  the 
first,  Hume's  early  and  respected  and  (in  ethical  philoso-. 
phy)  not  uninfluential  correspondent,  .the  second  Hume's 
trusted  friend  and  enthusiastic  eulogist,  and  the  last  the 
courteous  and  friendly  adversary  of  the  great  doubter; 
Smith,  too,  as  the  author  of  "  The  Wealth  of  Nations," 
famous  in  the  history  of  political  economy,  and  Reid,  as 
the  effective  enunciator  of  the  "  philosophy  of  common 
sense,"  the   acknowledged   father  of   the   brilliant  reac- 

13  265 


266  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

tion  which,  in  the  early  part  of  the  present  century,  and 
under  the  leading  of  such  men  as  Royer-Collard,  Maine 
de  Biran,  Jouffroy  and  Victor  Cousin,  asserted  itself  in 
France  in  opposition  to  the  prevalent  materialism  and 
sensationalism,  which,  on  its  part,  also  claimed  (through 
Condillac)  a  British  origin  in  the  philosophy  of  the 
Englishman,  John  Locke.  Along  with  these,  the  list 
of  Scotland's  philosophic  worthies  contains  such  names 
as  Carmichael,  Turnbull,  Home  (Lord  Karnes),  Oswald,  . 
Beattie,  Fergusson,  Burnett  (Lord  Monboddo),  Stewart, 
Alison,  Brown,  Abercrombie,  and  forty  others,  all  honor- 
able, and  some  possessing  a  degree  of  eminence.  But 
to  none  of  all  those  whom  I  have  named  was  given 
Hume's  faculty  of  startling  and  awakening  paradox  or 
his  artistic  cunning,  and  Hamilton  was  superior  to  all 
in  a  certain  and  remarkably  athletic  agility  of  intellect 
and  breadth  of  learning. 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  as  in  contrast  with  the  state 
of  things  in  England,  that  the  most  eminent  leaders  of 
speculation  in  Scotland  have  nearly  all  held  university 
chairs.  That  philosophy  and  the  philosophical  sciences 
(as  they  are  termed),  with  the  spirit  of  living  inquiry 
which  they  presuppose  and  the  all-inclusive  range  of 
their  problems,  should  be  at  home  in  an  university,  if 
anywhere,  is  sufficiently  obvious.  The  greatest  philoso- 
phers of  antiquity  were  teachers.  The  influence  and  re- 
nown of  mediaeval  and  modern  universities  have  been 
more  strictly  proportioned  to  the  ability  and  prestige  of 
their  teachers  of  philosophy  than  to  anything  else.  A 
notable  example  is  furnished  in  the  German  universities 
during  the  past  century,  rendered  illustrious,  as  they  have 
been,  and  centres  of  an   inexhaustible  intellectual  and 


SIR  WILLIAM   HAMILTON".  267 

moral  power,  through  the  lives  and  teaching  of  such 
men  as  Kant,  Ficlite,  Schelliug,  Hegel,  and  many  others 
scarcely  less  worthy  of  mention.  Nothing  of  this  kind 
has  been  true  of  the  English  universities  for  hundreds  of 
years  past.  Wo  have  seen  how  Bacon,  and  Hobbes,  and 
Locke,  instead  of  receiving  from  that  wliich  was  offered  — 
or,  rather,  forced  upon  —  them  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge, 
under  the  name  of  philosophy,  a  fascinating,  winning, 
quickening,  awakening  stimulus,  such  as  is  always  and 
necessarily  produced  when  questions  of  vital  and  com- 
manding interest  are  exhibited  in  all  their  amplitude  of 
significance  and  discussed  with  living  power  and  convic- 
tion, or,  in  otiier  words,  when  philosophical  instruction  is 
not  mere  repetition,  but  rational  persuasion  (or,  in  the 
Socratic  and  Platonic  sense,  intellectual  midwifery), —  that 
these  men,  I  say,  who  certainly  could  not  be  charged  with 
a  total  lack  of  philosophical  interest  or  capacity,  were 
simply  repelled  and  bored.  In  like  manner  Hamilton,  as 
a  student  at  Oxford,  wrote  in  1807,  the  first  year  of  his 
residence  there,  to  his  mother:  "I  am  so  plagued  by 
these  foolish  lectures  of  the  College  tutors  that  I  have 
little  time  to  do  anything  else.  Aristotle  to-day,  ditto 
to-morrow;  and  I  believe  that  if  the  ideas  furnished  by 
Aristotle  to  these  numskulls  were  taken  away,  it  would 
be  doubtful  whether  there  remained  a  single  notion." 
Accordingly  Hamilton  soon  abandoned  lectures  and 
classes,  and  pursued  his  studies  wholly  by  himself,  the 
university  simply  furnishing  him  an  academical  resi- 
dence, and,  in  due  time,  on  examination,  his  degrees. 
Doubtless,  a  sufficient,  if  not  the  only  or  ultimate  cause 
of  this  state  of  things  in  the  English  universities  is  to  be 
found  in  the  circumstance  pointed  out  by  Hamilton  in 


268  BUITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

his  discussions  of  university  education,  tliat  at  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  tlie  universities  had  become  merged  in 
the  colleges.  University  professors  did  not  exist,  or  else 
were  deprived  of  their  proper  function.  Instruction  was 
practically  confined  to  a  numerous  body  of  college  bene- 
ficiaries, who  were  not  and  could  not  all  be  eminent  as 
students  and  thinkers,  and  were  prepared  only  to  teach 
in  a  very  elementary  manner,  by  repeating  unintelligently 
the  words  of  a  text-book.  The  higher- education  in  this 
country  —  I  remark  in  passing  —  is  only  of  late  beginning 
to  rise  above  the  college  or  gyranasial  grade.  The  im- 
mense majority  of  our  college  professors  (there  are  of 
course  notable  exceptions)  have  of  necessity  been  and  still 
are  mere  drill-masters,  though,  it  is  true,  often  capable, 
by  native  endowment,  and  desirous  of  being  much  more 
than  mere  drill-masters.  Neither  philosophy  nor  the  hu- 
mane and  positive  sciences  can  be  or  are  carried  by  them 
much  beyond  their  respective  alphabets,  and  a  Bacon  or 
Hamilton,  who  should  repair  to  them,  hoping  to  acquire 
the  developed  insight  and  power  of  an  independent  intel- 
lectual worker  or  thinker,  by  coming  in  contact  with 
such  workers  or  thinkers,  would  almost  certainly  be 
doomed  to  disappointment.  The  moral  of  all  this  is,  that 
the  need  of  philosophy  and  all  sciences  in  this  country, 
the  need  of  the  best  intellects  among  our  youth,  the  im- 
perative need  for  the  solidification  and  broadening  of  our 
national  character  is,  not  that  the  colleges,  which  lay 
the  necessary  foundation,  should  be  done  away,  but  that 
the  system  of  our  higher  education  should  be  capped  by 
the  addition  of  the  true  university,  where  thought  and 
investigation  are  free  and  active,  unrestricted  by  lack  of 
time  and  means,  and  always  and  intelligently  and  inde- 


SIR   WILLTAM   HAMILTON".  269 

pendently  working  upon  the  outskirts  of  the  domain  of 
the  known  to  conquer  more  and  more  the  limitless  field 
of  the  unknown.  One  of  the  brightest  hopes  of  America 
may  well  be  founded  on  the  circumstance  that  the  di- 
rectors of  our  higher  education  are  distinctly  recognizing 
the  university  ideal,  and  are  here  and  there  taking  effect- 
ive steps  for  its  realization. 

In  Scotland,  then,  I  repeat,  the  most  distinguished 
leaders  of  thought  were  nearly  all  university  men. 
Hutcheson,  Smith,  and  Reid  held  successively  the  chair 
of  moral  philosophy  at  Glasgow.  Stewart  and  Brown 
occupied  the  same  chair  at  Edinburgh.  In  the  Profess- 
ors' court  of  the  University  of  Glasgow  William  Stirling 
Hamilton  was  born  on  the  8th  day  of  March,  1788.  His 
father,  Dr.  William  Hamilton,  was  Professor  of  Anatomy 
and  Botany  in  the  Faculty  of  Medicine,  a  position  wor- 
thily held  before  him  by  his  own  father  and  his  uncle. 
The  subject  of  our  present  study  was  thus  born,  so  to 
speak,  in  and  to  university  life.  In  the  same  sense  it 
could  be  said  that  he  was  born  in  and  for  the  life  of  the 
student  of  medicine  —  a  circumstance  which,  indeed,  as 
we  shall  see,  had  an  important  bearing  on  the  tenor  and 
direction  of  his  own  studies. 

His  father.  Dr.  and  Prof.  Hamilton,  died  at  the  early 
age  of  thirty-one,  when  William,  his  eldest  son,  was  but 
two  years  old.  A  younger  son,  Thomas,  subsequently 
Captain,  Hamilton,  an  author  of  repute,  was  at  the  time 
only  two  months  old.  To  the  mother's  only  care,  sup- 
ported by  limited  pecuniary  resources,  the  training  and 
education  of  these  two  children  were  thus  early  left.  She, 
the  daughter  of  an  influential  Glasgow  merchant,  Stirling 
by  name,  carefully  solicitous  respecting  the  physical  and 


270  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

moral  welfare,  and  the  whole  education  of  her  children, 
combined  ufFection  with  a  certain  and  unmistaitable  Scotch 
strictness  in  her  treatment  of  them,  but  secured  their 
hearty  respect  and  devotion.  There  was  needed  a  con- 
siderable strength  of  will  and  purpose  rightly  to  curb  and 
direct  the  overflowing  vitality  of  the  elder  son.  For  if 
the  expression  may  be  allowed,  young  William  was  an 
intense  boy,  "fond,"  says  his  biographer,  "of  active  out- 
door sports;  given  decidedly  to  practical  jokes  and  fun; 
...  a  youth,  in  fine,  with  an  untold  and  ever-increasing 
amount  of  vital  force  about  him."  And  in  such  force,  I 
affirm —  all  theories  of  human  automatism  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding,  and  in  agreement,  I  am  sure,  with  what 
Mrs.  Hamilton  found  true  in  her  son's  case  —  there  is 
always  a  great  deal  of  spontaneity.  It  is  apt  to  invent  a 
way  of  its  own,  and  to  insist  on  having  it,  without  refer- 
ence to  the  unpleasant  maxims  of  elderly  people,  and  to 
show  a  very  vexatious  indifference  to  the  performance  of 
tasks  set  by  those  who  are  wiser  than  its  possessors.  So 
one  of  William's  early  teachers  was  compelled  to  report  to 
his  mother  that  he  was  "very  anxious  to  become  his  own 
master,"  rendering  it  necessary  "to  be  excessively  pointed 
and  strict"  in  dealing  with  him,  and  he  was,  it  is  added, 
"very  much  inclined  to  be  idle,  although  more  studious 
than  at  first."  I  think  we  may  infer  that  Mrs.  Hamilton, 
as  an  anxious  and  faithful  mother,  had  her  hands  sufh- 
ciently  full. 

With  his  .abundant  vitality  and  powerful  physical 
frame,  Hamilton  early  developed  an  unusual  fondness  and 
ability  for  athletic  sports,  which  followed  him  all  through 
his  youth  and  early  manhood.  He  was  an  enthusiast 
about  bathing,  in  which  he  would  fain  have  indulged 


SIfi   "WILLIAM   HAMILTOiT.  271 

every  day  in  the  year,  an  extraordinary  swimmer,  an  ex- 
cellent skater  and  boatsman  and  gunner,  and  superior  to 
others  in  leaping  and  running.  As  a  young  man,  he 
would  take  a  boy  of  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age  on  his 
right  hand,  and  allow  him  to  "stand  on  it  as  he  held  it 
out."  An  amusing  incident  is  related  of  his  leaping  with 
a  pole  over  a  very  high  wall,  which  effectually  separated 
his  companions  from  the  forbidden  fruit  in  a  professor's 
garden,  and  landing  in  the  astonished  presence  of  the 
dignified  proprietor  of  the  temptation.  But  with  all  this 
physical  vigor  went  a  generous  and  gentle  spirit  of  help- 
fulness and  protection  toward  those  who  needed  it. 

At  the  age  of  twelve  Hamilton  had  so  far  progressed 
with  his  studies,  under  private  teachers  and  at  the  Glas- 
gow public  schools,  that  he  was  admitted  to  attend  the 
junior  Greek  and  Latin  classes  of  the  University  or  Col- 
lege of  Glasgow.  But  in  the  following  year  (1801),  much 
(and  naturally)  to  his  disappointment  and  indignation,  he 
was  withdrawn  from  college  by  the  "judicious  and  inex- 
orable" authority  of  his  mother  and  sent  away  to  a  pri- 
vate school  in  England.  After  chafing  there  a  couple  of 
years  he  returned,  in  1803,  to  Glasgow,  joining  the  senior 
classes  in  Latin  and  Greek  and  the  classes  in  logic  and 
moral  philosophy.  In  each  of  the  two  latter  he  won  the 
highest  honors  of  the  year,  awarded  by  the  votes  of  the 
class.  The  three  following  years  were  devoted  to  the  study 
of  medicine,  the  first  two  at  Glasgow  and  the  last  at  Edin- 
burgh. That  in  the  intervals  of  summer  leisure  his  edu- 
cation might  still  be  visibly  progressing,  his  mother  pro- 
vided by  placing  him,  along  with  his  brother,  in  the 
summer  of  1803,  which  preceded  his  regntrance  at  the 
University  of  Glasgow,  in  charge  of  a  country  clergyman, 


272  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

a  few  miles  from  Edinburgh.  Thither  he  returned  in  the 
two  following  summers,  while  the  season  before  his  year 
at  Edinburgh  was  passed  in  medical  studies  in  connection 
with  the  Infirmary  at  Glasgow. 

The  correspondence  of  the  year  at  Edinburgh  reveals 
Hamilton's  mother  lecturing  her  son  on  his  expenditures 
for  books  and  physical  apparatus,  and  the  latter  justifying 
himself  with  the  plea  that  his  purchases  were  mostly  of  med- 
ical and  classical  books  immediately  needed,  and  that  the 
most  of  them  were  bought  at  a  third  or  half  of  their  shop 
price.  At  another  time  he  argues  (in  a  letter  to  his 
mother)  that  his  "money  has  only  changed  its  shape. 
What  was  little  ago  bank-notes,  is  now  metamorphosed 
into  the  more  respectable  appearance  of  rare  and  cheap 
works;  and  from  the  monotonous  repetitions,  *  The  Bank 
of  Scot,  promise  to  pay  to  the  bearer  on  demand,'  etc., 
they  have  now  suffered  the  glorious  metamorphosis  of 
being  converted  into  historians,  and  philosophers,  and 
poets,  and  orators,  and  though  last  not  least,  into  physi- 
cians." Prof.  Veitch  (on  whose  memoir  of  Hamilton 
this  biographical  sketch  is  chiefly  founded)  gives  a  partial 
list  of  the  books  which  Hamilton  had  procured  in  his 
sixteenth,  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  years,  indicating  a 
wide  and  intelligent  range  of  taste.  He  rapidly  developed 
into  a  famous  book-hunter.  The  correspondence  of  sul)se- 
quent  years  abounds  in  enthusiastic  references  to  treasures 
secured  at  second-hand  bookstores:  manuscripts.  Commen- 
taries on  Aristotle,  editions  of  mediaeval  and  later  scholars, 
etc.  He  communicated  his  enthusiasm  to  others,  one  of 
whom,  Scott's  biographer,  Lockhart,  and  Hamilton's 
friend  and  companion  at  Oxford,  declare?,  in  a  letter  to 
his  father,  "  Hamilton  is  a  famous  adviser  in  the  purchas- 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  273 

ing  of  books."  The  result  of  this  taste  of  Hamilton's  — 
which,  of  course,  at  once  stimulated  and  was  stimulated 
by  his  extraordinary  love  of  learning  —  was  the  final  ac- 
cumulation of  one  of  the  largest  and  choicest  philosoph- 
ical libraries  in  Great  Britain,  containing  some  ten  thou- 
sand volumes. 

Before  the  period  of  his  studies  at  the  Scotch  univer- 
sities was  over,  Hamilton  had  already  developed  that  dae- 
monic—  and,  especially,  nocturnal  —  energy  as  a  student, 
which  attended  him  through  life,  hindered,  as  I  am  con- 
vinced, his  intellectual  productivity,  and  occasioned  the 
illness  which,  protracted  through  many  weary  years,  re- 
sulted in  his  death.  From  Edinburgh  he  wrote  to  his 
mother, "  From  nine  in  the  morning  till  three  in  the  after- 
noon, I  have  not  a  single  moment  to  spare  —  out  of  one 
class  into  another."  "I  .  .  .  have  been  so  busy  that  I 
have  not  been  in  bed  before  two  or  half-past  it  for  these 
six  weeks,  and  am  up  every  morning  by  a  quarter-past 
eight."  Later  in  life,  as  we  shall  see,  he  abused  his  body, 
in  this  way,  even  more  unreasonably. 

Finally,  two  of  the  Edinburgh  letters  contain  amusing 
evidence  of  a  trait  which  one  may  connect  with  Hamilton's 
subsequent  successful  defense  of  his  right  to  a  baronial 
title.  In  the  earlier  of  these  letters  Hamilton  says  to  his 
mother,  "  I  wish  you  would  give  me  a  genteeler  appella- 
tion on  the  back  of  your  next  letter,"  and  ends  with 
"Your  affectionate  son, 

W.  S.  Hamilton,  Esq.  Remember  that.' 
The  other  one  shows  that  Mrs.  Hamilton  did  not 
"remember  that,"  and  the  son  threatens,  in  case  the 
neglect  be  continued,  to  direct  his  letters  to  her,  "Eliza- 
beth Hamilton,  without  any  ceremony." 


274  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

In  the  year  1677  Robert  Snell,  a  Scotchman,  and 
graduate  of  Glasgow,  dying  in  England,  left  a  sum  of 
money,  the  proceeds  of  which  were  to  be  used  for  the 
education  of  Scottish  students  at  Oxford.  It  was  through 
participation  in  the  benefit  of  this  foundation  that 
Adam  Smith  was  enabled  to  pursue  his  studies  at  this 
English  university.  Owing  to  his  own  excellent  and  suc- 
cessful career  as  a  student  at  Glasgow,  one  of  the  "  Snell 
exhibitions,"  as  they  were  called,  was  offered  to  Hamilton. 

It  was  while  residing  at  Oxford  that  the  decided  bent 
of  Hamilton's  mind  toward  abstract  studies  and  ex- 
haustive learning  was  clearly  developed.  He  entered 
upon  residence  there,  at  Bulliol  College,  in  May  1807. 
His  studies  now  were  mainly  literary  and  philosophical, 
in  preparation  for  the  examination  for  the  Bachelor's 
degree;  though  medicine  was  not  wholly  forgotten.  The 
acquisition  of  the  Bachelor's  degree  was  conditioned  upon 
the  presentation  of  a  series  of  books,  selected  by  the 
candidate,  and  relating  to  various  specified  departments 
of  learning,  on  the  subject-matter  of  which  a  public 
examination  was  held.  Hamilton  sought  the  aid,  as  in- 
structor, of  one  of  the  fellows  of  Balliol  College,  but 
soon  discovered  that  this  was  unnecessary.  "The  tutors," 
in  his  own  language,  "  whistled  to  their  pupils  the  old 
tunes  which,  as  pupils,  had  been  piped  to  them."  Ac- 
cordingly it  happened,  according  to  the  later  testimony 
of  one  of  his  Oxford  friends,  that  "Hamilton  had  no 
teacher,  and  was  strictly  a  solitary  student."  He  applied 
himself  to  work  with  extraordinary  and  characteristic 
energy.  The  range  of  his  reading  and  knowledge  far 
surpassed  any  that  had  long  been  known  at  Oxford.  He 
had  a  remarkable  facility  at  "  tearing  out  the  entrails  " 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON".  275 

of  a  book,  as  he  termed  it.  Says  a  fellow-student,  "  A 
perusal  of  the  preface,  table  of  contents,  and  index,  and 
a  glance  at  those  parts  which  were  new  to  him  (which 
were  few),  were  all  that  was  necessary."  He  thus  as  an 
undergraduate  acquired  the  reputation  of  being  the 
"most  learned  Aristotelian  at  Oxford."  Nor  was  his 
reading  confined  to  Aristotle,  but  included  all  his  com- 
mentators, Greek  classics,  Cicero,  and  the  learning  of 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.  Nor  was  he  a 
mere  retired  book-worm.  He  was  always  ready  for  sports, 
and  excursions,  full  of  joyous  humor,  kindly,  cordial, 
and  possessed  of  unusual  manly  beauty.*  At  his  ex- 
amination, which  "was  continued  for  the  exceptional 
period  of  two  days,  and  occupied  in  all  twelve  hours," 
he  was  prepared,  says  a  fellow-student,  "to  be  examined 
in  more  than  four  times  the  number  of  philosophical 
and  didactic  books  ever  wont  to  be  taken  up  even  for 
the  highest  honors;  and  those,  likewise,  authors  far 
more  abstruse  than  had  previously  been  attempted  in 
the  schools ;  while  at  the  same  time  he  was  examined 
in  more  than  any  ordinary  complement  of  merely  clas- 
sical works."  "In  fourteen  of  his  books  on  the  abstruser 
subjects  of  Greek  philosophy,"  we  are  told  that  "  he  was 
not  questioned,  the  greater  part  of  these  being  declared 
by  the  masters  to  be  too  purely  metaphysical  for  public 
examination,"  He  won  "the  highest  distinction  the 
examiners  could  bestow  "  (said  Dr.  Jenkyns,  subsequent 
master  of  Balliol).  Dr.  Parsons,  at  that  time  master  of 
Balliol,  said  of  Hamilton,  in  the  year  following  his  ex- 
amination (Hamilton  took  his  degree  in  1810,  after  little 

*  One  who  heard  Hamilton  lecture,  later  in  life,  tells  me  that  he  was 
"gloriously  handsome." 


276  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

more  than  three  years  of  residence),  "  He  is  one  of  those, 
and  they  are  rare,  who  are  best  left  to  themselves.  He 
will  turn  out  a  great  scholar,  and  we  shall  get  the  credit 
of  making  him  so,  though  in  point  of  fact  we  shall  have 
done  nothing  for  him  whatever." 

The  fpllowing  ten  years  of  Hamilton's  life  were  out- 
wardly uneventful.  In  1814  he  took  his  master's  degree 
at  Oxford.  Meanwhile  he  had,  for  unexplained  reasons, 
dropped  mediciue,  and  studied  law  and  been  already  ad- 
mitted to  the  bar  at  Edinburgh,  where  he  fixed  his  resi- 
dence. He  never  rose  to  eminence  at  the  bar,  lacking  flu- 
ency as  a  speaker,  being  impatient  of  the  petty  details  of 
the  profession,  and  more  prone  to  spend  his  time  among 
the  mustiest  books  in  the  Advocates'  Library ;  in  short,  as 
Lord  Jeffrey  regarded  and  termed  him,  "an  unpractical 
man."  Yet  he  was  already  becoming  known  and  sought 
out  on  account  of  his  reputation  for  vast  learning,  and 
that,  too,  by  foreigners  who  visited  Edinburgh,  among 
others  by  our  countryman,  Edward  Everett.  There  he 
seems,  in  the  phraseology  of  to-day,  to  have  interviewed, 
rather  than  to  have  allowed  himself  to  be  interviewed  by 
them,  and  so  made  them  tributary  to  his  own  avidity  for 
varied  information.  In  this,  as  in  so  many  other  respects 
during  the  earlier  period  of  his  manhood,  and  indeed,  to 
a  great  extent,  throughout  his  wliole  career,  he  justified 
the  judgment  of  a  contemporary  who  styled  him  "rather 
a  recipient  than  a  creator." 

Among  other  topics  on  which  he  spent  much  research, 
in  the  first  years  after  fixing  his  abode  at  Edinburgh,  was 
that  of  his  hereditary  claim  to  the  baronetcy  of  Preston. 
This  claim  he  established  to  the  satisfaction  of  a  compe- 
tent jury  in  the  year  1816,  and  was  "declared  thencefor- 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON.  277 

Ward  entitled  to  bear  the  name  and  style  of  Baronet  of 
Preston  and  Fingalton." 

In  1817  he  visited  Germany  in  the  interest  of  the  Ad- 
vocates' Library,  and  again  in  1820  to  collect  evidence  in 
a  case  at  law.  In  neither  case  was  his  stay  a  prolonged 
one,  nor  does  he  appear  to  have  come  in  contact  with 
German  philosophers.  But  he  was  led  to  study  the  Ger- 
man language  and  to  interest  himself  in  its  literature. 

In  1820  the  chair  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh  became  vacant  through  the  death  of 
Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  and  the  resignation  of  Dugald  Stew- 
art, its  titular  occupant.  Accordingly  Hamilton,  follow- 
ing Scotch  custom,  procured  testimonials  as  to  character 
and  qualifications,  and  presented  them  to  the  Town 
Council,  in  which  body,  singularly  enough,  the  power  of 
appointment  was  lodged,  with  an  application  for  the  posi- 
tion. Notwithstanding  the  incontestable  superiority  of 
his  credentials  and  qualifications,  the  Town  Council  —  a 
body,  for  the  rest,  scarcely  competent,  as  such  bodies  are 
generally  composed,  to  judge  of  the  merits  of  candidates 
for  university  appointments — moved  by  political  consid- 
erations (Hamilton  was  a  Whig,  and  the  majority  of  the 
Council  were  Tories),  elected,  by  a  strict  party  vote,  Hamil- 
ton's Tory  competitor.  It  was  not  till  sixteen  more  years 
of  waiting  had  passsd,  when  Hamilton  was  already  forty- 
eight  years  of  age,  that  he  at  last  secured  a  position  suited 
to  his  tastes  and  abilities  —  a  position  which  he  honored, 
and  in  which  he  rendered  himself  illustrious.  The  stu- 
dent of  Kant's  biography  will  be  reminded  of  the  similar 
fate  of  this  renowned  German,  Hamilton's  partial  master. 

In  the  following  year,  however,  1821,  Hamilton  was 
elected  to  a  professorship  of  Civil  History,  at  the  attract- 


278  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

ive  salary  of  one  hundred  pounds  a  year,  levied  by  a  duty 
on  ale  and  beer.  The  attendance  upon  instruction  in 
this  topic  was  purely  voluntary,  and  had  run  very  low. 
Hamilton  threw  himself  with  zest  and  energy  into  the 
labors  required  of  him,  and  prepared  a  course  of  lectures 
on  the  modern  history  of  Europe  down  to  the  outbreak 
of  the  French  Revolution.  Shorter  courses  or  occasional 
lectures  upon  general  literature  and  political  philosophy 
were  added.  The  attendance  upon  them  was  gratifying, 
and  the  impression  produced  deep  and  lasting.  Hamil- 
ton appears  to  have  continued  to  perform  the  duties  of 
his  position  for  some  eight  or  ten  years,  when  "  through 
the  bankruptcy  of  the  city"  "the  salary  ceased  to  be 
paid,"  and  the  lectures  were  discontinued. 

The  learned  and  recondite  researches  were  meanwhile 
constantly  pursued  with  energetic  avidity,  and  directed 
to  literature,  philology  (including  Greek  grammar),  and 
philosophy.  In  an  interview  with  that  philological  prod- 
igy. Dr.  Sam.  Parr,  Hamilton  displayed  such  extraordi- 
nary and  exact  learning  in  the  line  of  the  Doctor's  own 
specialty,  that  tlie  venerable  man  at  last  burst  forth  in 
amazement,  "Why,  who  are  you,  sir?" 

The  claims  of  phrenology  having  been  loudly  asserted 
at  Edinburgh  about  this  time,  Hamilton  turned  his 
attention  to  this  subject,  not  simply  in  the  way  of  theory, 
but  by  numerous  experiments,  conducted,  as  he  stated,  on 
"above  one  thousand  brains  of  above  fifty  species  of  ani- 
mals." His  medical  education  had  peculiarly  qualified 
him  to  conduct  such  experiments  with  intelligence,  and 
he  seems  to  have  been  possessed  with  a  strong  native  bent 
to  inquiries  conducted  by  this  method.  Later  in  life  we 
find  him  indefatigably  experimenting  with  his  children 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  279 

and  himself,  and  it  is  stated  that  he  made  "discoveries  of 
very  considerable  importance  both  in  physiology  and  anat- 
omy." His  conclusions  with  reference  to  phrenology  were 
emphatically  adverse  to  the  pretensions  of  that  alleged 
science.  In  animal  magnetism  and  mesmerism  —  subjects 
then  discussed  with  special  interest  —  he  found  much 
that  seemed  to  him  worthy  of  attention  and  belief,  but  in 
clairvoyance  nothing. 

In  March,  1829,  two  years  after  his  mother's  death, 
Hamilton  married  his  cousin,  Miss  Marshall,  who  had  for 
some  time  been  a  member  of  his  mother's  family.  This 
union  was  of  the  greatest  consequence  to  him,  for,  as  we 
shall  see,  it  was  to  the  self-sacrificing  assistance  and  con- 
stant encouragement  of  his  wife  that  he  owed,  in  the 
greatest  measure,  all  he  accomplished  after  his  appoint- 
ment to  the  position  in  which  the  bulk  of  his  labors  were 
performed. 

In  the  year  1829  Prof.  Macvey  Napier,  whose  inter- 
esting correspondence  was  published  a  few  months  ago, 
succeeded  to  the  editorship  of  the  Edinburgh  Review. 
With  a  view  to  rendering  this  periodical  more  a  vehicle 
of  philosophical  discussion  than  it  had  been  heretofore, 
he  called  upon  his  friend  Hamilton  for  assistance,  and  by 
dint  of  persistent  pressure  and  encouragement  secured 
his  compliance  with  the  request.  The  subject  proposed 
for  the  first  article  was  the  philosophy  of  M.  Cousin  — 
more  especially  his  doctrine  respecting  the  cognoscibility 
of  the  so-called  infinite  or  absolute.  Among  the  reasons 
which,  according  to  Hamilton's  own  subsequent  state- 
ment, made  him  disinclined  to  undertake  the  review  of 
Cousin,  was  his  professed  knowledge  "that  a  discussion  of 
the  leading  doctrine  of  [Cousin's]  book  would  prove  un- 


280  BKlTlStl   THOtJGHT  AKD  THINKERS. 

iutelligible,  not  only  to  '  the  general  reader,'  but,  with  few 
exceptions,  to  our  British  metaphysicians  at  large."  (In  a 
letter  to  M.  Cousin,  written  in  1834,  several  years  after 
the  publication  of  the  article  in  question,  Hamilton  indi- 
cated his  contemptuous  sense  of  British  incompetence  — 
at  that  time — in  matters  of  the  profoundest  philosophy 
.  by  saying,  "  I  do  not  believe  there  are  five  readers  of  the 
'Review'  who  are  qualified  to  comprehend  anything  above 
the  superficial  psychology  dignified  in  this  country  with 
the  name  of  metaphysic,  far  less  to  understand  the  merits 
of  your  philosophy  and  that  of  Schelling.")  Whatever 
we  may  hold  respecting  the  philosophical  positions  main- 
tained and  criticised  in  the  review  of  Cousin  —  a  question 
which  we  will  keep,  for  the  moment,  in  abeyance  —  it  was, 
at  the  time,  a  singularity  in  British  periodical  literature, 
and  commanded  immediate  attention  both  at  home  and 
abroad.  With  Kant,  European  philosophy  had  fifty  years 
before  passed  a  critical  and  all-decisive  point.  Yet  Kant's 
principal  work  had  not  yet  been  translated  into  English, 
and  except  for  Coleridge,  England  had  scarcely  known 
that  Kant  had  lived  and  spoken.  But  here  was  an 
anonymous  writer  who,  with  a  brilliant  mastery  of  style, 
an  appearance  of  accurate  and  easy  familiarity  with  the 
later  developments  of  continental  (and  especially  German) 
thought,  and  an  authoritative  peremptoriness  of  dialect- 
ical statement,  came  forward  aad  spoke,  under  Kantian 
inspiration,  a  new,  yet  intelligible  language  —  delivered  a 
deeply  interesting  and,  if  true,  important  message,  touch- 
ing questions  concerning  radically  the  problems  of  the 
possible  range  and  the  duty  of  human  faith  and  knowl- 
edge. The  article  was  soon  translated  into  French  and 
Italian.      M.  Cousin   (then  at  the  zenith   of   his  —  not 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  281 

purely  philosophical  —  popularity),  whose  doctrine  it  vig- 
orously attacked,  made  inquiry  concerning  its  authorship, 
and  entered  into  the  most  friendly  and  encomiastic  corre- 
spondence with  Hamilton,  between  whom  and  himself  a 
relation  of  apparently  hearty  mutual  admiration  and  es- 
teem continued  ever  afterward  to  subsist. 

Until  the  year  183G,  when  he  was  appointed  to  the 
chair  of  Logic  and  Metaphysics  at  Edinburgh,  Hamilton 
continued  his  contributions  to  the  Edinburgh  Review,  on 
subjects  partly  pyschological  and  logical,  partly  literary, 
and  partly  (and  numerously)  educational.  In  the  latter 
Hamilton  discussed  the  subjects  of  university  patronage 
and  superintendence  (with  reference  to  the  universities 
of  Scotland),  the  "  state  of  the  English  universities,  with 
more  especial  reference  to  Oxford,"  the  "right  of  dissent- 
ers to  admission  into  the  English  universities,"  and  other 
topics  pertaining  to  the  system  of  higher  education.  To 
say  that  these  discussions  abounded  in  learning  and  good 
sense,  vigorously  applied  to  throw  light  on  imperfections 
and  abuses,  and  to  restore  a  proper  conception  of  univer- 
sity functions,  and  that  they  bore  valuable  and  acknowl- 
edged fruit  in  legislation  and  practice,  is  barely  to  meet 
the  requirements  of  truth  with  respect  to  them.  They  fur- 
nish an  extremely  instructive  study  for  any  one  interested 
in  the  theory  and  practice  of  higher  educational  institu- 
tions. Prof.  Veitch  says,  with  evident  justice,  that  with 
his  "articles  on  the  Universities  and  University  Reform 
.  .  .  commenced  Sir  William's  practical  influence  on  the 
machinery  for  the  higher  education  of  the  country  —  an 
influence  hardly  less  powerful  and  commanding  than  that 
of  his  speculative  writings  on  the  philosophical  thought 
of  the  times." 
13* 


282  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

In  the  year  1836,  on  the  occasion  of  a  vacancy  occur- 
ring in  the  chair  of  Logic  and  Metaphysics  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Edinburgh,  Sir  William  Hamilton,  by  an  al- 
most evenly  divided  vote  of  the  municipality,  was  elected 
to  the  position.  The  election  was  forced,  in  opposition 
to  prejudices  and  insinuations  of  the  most  varied  and 
vulgar  kind,  by  the  overwhelming  weight  of  testimony, 
from  foreigners  as  well  as  distinguished  Britons,  to  Ham- 
ilton's remarkable  and  preeminent  fitness  for  the  post  in 
question.  The  election  took  place  in  July,  and  Ham- 
ilton entered  in  the  following  November  on  the  perform- 
ance of  the  functions  as  a  professor,  which  he  continued 
to  exercise  during  the  remaining  twenty  years  of  his  life. 

Although,  throughout  his  life,  ever  an  enormous 
reader  and  busy  thinker,  Hamilton  was  always  given  to 
exercise  procrastination  in  the  matter  of  writing.  Such 
work  he  was  always  prone  to  put  off  till  the  last  moment 
and  then  to  perform  only  under  the  immediate  pressure 
of  some  sort  of  necessity.  The  preparation  of  his  uni- 
versity lectures  formed  no  exception  to  this  rule.  This 
work  he  delayed  till  the  beginning  of  the  session  was 
close  at  hand,  and  he  was  then  fain  to  defer  the  opening 
of  his  course  for  a  few  weeks.  From  such  an  impolitic 
course  his  friends  dissuaded  him,  and  the  result  is  de- 
scribed in  the  following  passage  from  his  biography  by 
Prof.  Veitch : 

"The  first  course  of  lectures  was  composed  during'  the  currency 
of  the  session  of  five  months.  He  gave  three  lectures  a  week,  and 
each  lecture  was,  as  a  rule,  written  on  the  night  preceding  its  deliv- 
ery. The  lecture-hour  was  one  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and  the 
lecturer  seldom  went  to  bed  before  five  or  six  in  the  morning.  He 
was  generally  roused  about  ten  or  eleven,  and  then  hurried  oft'  to 


SIR  WILLIAM   HAMILTON".  283 

the  College,  portfolio  under  arm,  at  a  swinging  pace.  Frequently, 
notwithstanding  the  late  hour  of  going  to  bed,  he  had  to  be  up 
before  nine  o'clock,  in  time  to  attend  the  Teind  Court.  All  through 
the  session  Lady  Hamilton  sat  up  with  her  husband  each  night 
until  near  the  grey  dawn  of  the  winter  morning.  Sir  William 
wrote  the  pages  of  the  lecture  on  rough  sheets,  and  his  wife,  sitting 
in  an  adjoining  room,  copied  them  as  he  got  them  ready.  On  some 
occasions  the  subject  of  the  lecture  would  prove  less  easily  managed 
than  on  others,  and  then  Sir  William  would  be  found  writing  as 
late  as  nine  o'clock  of  a  morning,  while  his  faithful  but  wearied 
amanuensis  had  fallen  asleep  on  a  sofa.  Sometimes  the  finishing 
touch  to  the  lecture  was  left  to  be  given  just  before  the  class-hour." 
{Memoir  of  Sir  William  Hamilton,  pp.  206-7.) 

The  lectures  prepared  and  delivered  by  Hamilton  dur- 
ing the  first  year  of  his  incumbency  related  mostly  to 
psychology  and  have  been  since  published,  and  are  gener- 
ally known  as  the  Lectures  on  Metaphysics.  In  the  fol- 
lowing year  a  course  of  lectures  on  logic  (since  published 
under  that  title)  were  given,  and  during  the  remainder 
of  Hamilton's  life  these  two  courses  were  repeated  in 
alternate  years.  To  provide  for  the  needs  of  more  ad- 
vanced students,  Hamilton  at  one  time  proposed  a  special 
course,  to  be  devoted  solely  to  the  discussion  of  the  more 
abstract  questions  of  metaphysics,  and  inserted  in  the 
draught  of  the  programme  of  university  instruction  the 
announcement  of  such  a  course.  But  the  governing  body 
of  the  university,  the  town  council  (or  city  government)  — 
listen  to  this  absurdity!  —  in  the  exercise  of  their  con- 
summate wisdom,  expunged  this  announcement  from  the 
programme,  because,  among  other  reasons,  the  proposed 
new  course  related  (in  the  language  employed  by  the 
college  committee  of  the  town  council)  to  "  an  abstruse 


284  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

subject,  not  generally  considered  as  of  any  great  or  para- 
mount utility." 

Hamilton's  lectures  were  popular,  attracting  an  in- 
creasing number  of  auditors  till  the  end  of  his  life.  It 
was  his  expressed  and  never-forgotten  object  to  teach, 
not  philosophy,  but  to  jihilosopldzc.  By  special  hours  de- 
voted to  familiar  examinations  and  discussions  respect- 
ing the  topics  of  his  lectures,  by  special  honors  and 
prizes  for  those  who,  in  the  judgment  of  their  fellows, 
showed  marked  ability,  by  indicating  courses  of  reading 
and  subjects  for  essays,  by  the  formation  of  a  meta- 
physical society  for  students,  by  receiving  students  at  his 
own  house, —  by  all  these  and  other  methods,  all  of  which 
depended  on  his  own  earnest  purpose  and  personal  in- 
fluence for  their  effectiveness,  he  made  the  teaching  of 
his  department  a  powerful  factor  of  university  education. 

In  discussion  and  controversy  —  of  which  latter  he 
had  his  full  share  — Hamilton  often  assumed  an  au- 
thoritative, peremptory,  uncompromising  tone,  founded 
on  strong  conviction  combined  with  feeling.  From 
bodies  of  foreign  scholars  he  received  numerous  honors. 
His  works  include  the  two  volumes  of  his  university 
lectures — styled  "Metaphysics"  and  "Logic," — a  large 
volume  of  "Discussions  on  Philosophy  and  Literature," 
which  contains  his  contributions  to  the  Edinburgh  Re- 
view, and  an  edition  of  Reid's  works,  accompanied  by 
numerous  annotations  and  by  long  but  unfinished 
"Notes,"  which  are  of  decisive  importance  for  the  study 
of  his  philosophy.  He  was  engaged  at  the  time  of  his 
death  in  editing  the  works  of  Duguld  Stewart,  and  had 
made  exhaustive  studies  for  a  life  of  Luther.  His  at- 
titude with  reference  to  Christianity  was  reverential  and 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON".  285 

sympathetic.  His  theological  learning  was  unusually 
extensive,  and  he  lived  and  died  in  the  communion  of  the 
established  church  of  Scotland. 

Hamilton  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  left  a  com- 
plete and  systematic  statement  or  demonstration  of  his 
philosophical  views.  The  very  multifariousness  and 
minuteness  of  his  scholarship  stood  partly  in  the  way 
of  this.  Still,  his  philosophical  attitude  was  clearly 
marked,  and  his  doctrines  exerted  a 'wide  influence,  in 
America  as  well  as  in  Great  Britain.  Let  us  attempt  to 
see  what  this  attitude  was. 

It  was  determined,  we  may  say,  speaking  generally, 
by  Reid  and  Kant,  as  their  attitude  was,  in  turn,  de- 
termined or  elicited  by  Hume. 

Hume  (it  will  be  remembered)  reasoning,  in  general, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  pure,  passive  experience  and 
observation  (wliich,  as  we  know,  attains  only  the  tran- 
sient and  phenomenal),  and,  in  particular,  from  Locke's 
theory  of  ideas,  or  representative  images,  and  not  things, 
as  the  direct  objects  of  knowledge,  had  denied,  not  only 
with  Berkeley,  that  we  have  any  knowledge  of  an  ex- 
ternal world  possessing  substantive  reality,  but  also  that 
we  have  any  such  knowledge  of  mind.  All  that  we  know 
is  the  subjective  impressions  which  the  mysterious  beings 
who  usurp  the  use  of  the  personal  pronoun  loe,  are  alleged 
to  experience,  along  with  their  actual  but  arbitrary  and 
inexplicable  relations  of  succession  and  coexistence,  or 
"association."  Belief  and  conviction  were  simply  cases  of 
a  peculiar  vivacity  in  impressions,  or  in  their  fainter 
residuary  copies,  to  which  alone  Hume  gave  the  name 
of  ideas. 

Eeid,  still  professing  to  follow  only  the  so-called  method 


286  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

of  induction  and  observation,  as  the  only  one  authorized 
by  "common  sense"  and  competent  to  the  discovery  and 
cognition  of  truth,  applied  this  to  the  question  of  the 
constitution  of  the  human  mind  and  the  substance  of 
mental  experience.  Antecedently  to  all  inquiry,  "human 
nature,"  in  the  light  of  Hume's  professedly  exhaustive 
account  of  it,  as  constituted  solely  by  "three  laws  of 
association,  joined  to  a  few  original  feelings,"  appears  to 
Keid  as  a  ridiculous  "puppet,"  in  comparison  with  man 
as  actually  known  to  himself;  a  puppet,  "  contrived  by 
too  bold  an  apprentice  of  nature,  to  mimic  her  work. 
It  shews  tolerably  by  candle  light;  but  brought  into 
clear  day,  and  taken  to  pieces,  it  will  appear  to  be  a  man 
made  with  mortar  and  a  trowel." 

Now  what  Reid  expects  and  professes  to  find  by  his 
psychological  analysis  is  only  facts,  ultimate  facts,  and  not 
their  explanation  ;  the  latter  lies  beyond  the  range  of 
philosophy,  i.e.  of  all  knowledge,  according  to  Reid's 
(which,  as  he  everywhere  professes,  is  the  Baconian)  con- 
ception of  it.  He  examines,  then,  the  facts  of  mental 
experience  and  finds  that  they  include,  among  others, 
sensation  (or  sensible  perception),  memory,  and  imagina- 
tion ;  that  the  first  is  accompanied  with  the  belief  of  a 
present  existence,  memory  with  belief  of  a  past  existence, 
and  imagination  with  no  belief  at  all ;  that  perceived 
qualities  are  immediately  referred  to  an  objective,  mate- 
rial existence  (substance)  in  which  they  are  united ;  and 
that  mental  operations  are  with  the  same  immediateness 
ascribed  to  a  spiritual  agent  or  mind.  These  arc  simple, 
ultimate,  indefinable,  inexplicable  facts  of  our  mental 
experience.  They  precede  all  ratiocination.  Our  belief 
in  matter  and  mind  is  not,  as  preceding  philosophers  had 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON".  287 

maintained,  an  inference,  from  the  presence  of  idea- 
images  in  the  mind.  The  destruction  of  this  theory  of 
ideas  is  ostensibly  one  of  the  main  objects  of  Reid's  argu- 
mentation. He  professes  to  find  the  theory  utterly  unin- 
telligible and  without  the  slightest  warrant  in  any  observ- 
able facts,  and  ascribes  to  it  the  "  shocking  paradoxes"  of 
Berkeley  and  Hume.  No  (he  maintains),  in  sensible  per- 
ception is  immediately  given  the  conception  of  a  sensible 
object  and  the  inexpugnable  belief  in  its  existence.  In 
the  consciousness  of  mental  operations  is  immediately 
given  the  conception  of  a  mental  agent  and  the  belief  in 
its  existence.  In  neither  case,  as  Reid  imagines,  does  any 
"idea"  come  between  the  mind  and  the  object  of  its  con- 
viction. Behind  these  facts,  according  to  him,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  go.  Reid  concludes  that  they  are  founded  in  the 
constitution  of  our  nature ;  that  they  are  principles  of 
our  nature,  or  principles  of  common  sense.  These  prin- 
ciples are  not  known  only  through  the  fact  that  analysis 
is  unable  to  resolve  them  into  simpler  elements,  but  also 
by  a  practical  test.  Principles,  says  Reid,  "which  the 
constitution  of  our  nature  leads  us  to  believe,  and  which 
we  are  under  a  necessity  to  take  for  granted  in  the  com- 
mon concerns  of  life,  without  being  able  to  give  a  reason 
for  them  —  these  are  what  we  call  the  principles  of  com- 
mon sense."  And  finally  there  is  also  a  rational  criterion 
by  which  they  may  be  known.  For,  we  are  also  told,  in 
one  of  Reid's  later  works,  the  "  sole  province  "  of  common 
sense  is  the  first  office  of  reason,  namely,  "  to  judge  of 
things  self-evident."  It  is  the  faculty  of  principles,  a 
general  designation  for  all  indemonstrable,  but  still  in- 
eradicable, knowledge  or  belief. 

Reid's   reply  to    Hume,  then,  Avas  the  "philosophy  of 


288  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

common  sense."  Hume's  philosophical  scepticism  was 
alleged  to  be  unfounded,  because  derived  from  an  unwar- 
ranted (though  generally  assumed)  theory  of  knowledge, 
as  immediately  conversant  with  representative  ideas,  and 
not  with  things,  and  also  because  it  was  in  absurd  contra- 
diction to  the  actual,  inductively  ascertained,  primary 
necessities  of  belief  and  practice,  or  to  "  human  nature." 
The  demonstration  of  this  contradiction,  however,  could 
not  greatly  have  disturbed  Hume,  who  was  fully  aware  of 
its  existence.  Hume  knew  that  he  was  calling  in  question 
the  accepted  declarations  of  the  ''common  sense"  of  the 
vulgar  and  of  the  "reason"  of  metaphysicians.  This  was 
what  he  meant  to  do,  and  he  would  have  laughed  at  any 
one  who  should  have  attempted  to  put  him  to  shame  by 
telling  him  so.  And  if  Reid  had  succeeded  in  showing 
that  the  so-called  "  ideal  system,"  on  which  Hume's  scepti- 
cism was  founded,  was  a  myth,  it  would  still  have  been 
open  to  Hume  to  persist  in  a  doubt  which  he  had  once 
found  it  possible  to  maintain  in  defiance  of  self-styled 
"common  sense,"  believing,  or  hoping,  tiiat  if  the  argu- 
ment alleged  by  him  were  found  baseless,  yet  another 
might  be  found  which  could  not  be  overturned.  But 
Reid  did  not  disprove  the  doctrine  of  knowledge  through 
ideas,  in  any  sense  in  which  Hume's  scepticism  depended 
on  it.  On  the  contrary,  Reid  maintained  the  same  thing. 
He  could  not  but  distinguish  between  the  subjective  and 
the  objective  side  in  every  act  (or,  rather,  slate)  of  cogni- 
tion, and  the  former  corresponded  perfectly  to  Hume's 
"impressions"  and  "ideas."  All  that  Hume  had  said 
was  that  our  knowledge  is  only  of  the  subjective  side. 
Reid  virtually  said  the  same  thing.  Perception  and  reflec- 
tion, as  states  of  mind,  are  immediately  known  to  us. 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON.  289 

Perceived  object  and  mind,  he  holds,  are  not.  Perception 
and  reflection  are,  in  Eeid's  own  language,  only  signs  which 
"conjure  up,  as  by  a  kind  of  natural  magic,  a  conception 
and  belief  of  that  of  which  we  never  before  had  any  no- 
tion or  conception,"  namely,  of  matter  and  mind.  The 
former  were  to  the  latter,  not  indeed  as  resemblant  images 
to  their  originals,  but  still  a  tertium  quid,  standing  be- 
tween knowledge  and  being,  and  separating  the  former 
from  the  latter.  They  were  inexplicable  signs  of  reality, 
whose  interpretation  (i.e.  the  "  belief  "  in  which)  was  in- 
explicably forced  upon  us  by  our  "  nature,"  and  that 
was  all  there  was  to  be  said  about  them.  So  Keid  simply 
reasserted  as  facts  the  phenomena  of  mental  experience, 
which  Hume  admitted,  but  sought  to  explain,  or  to  ex- 
plain away ;  while  Reid,  on  the  contrary,  simply  declared 
that  they  were  on  their  very  face  both  inexplicable  and 
inexpugnable. 

Reid,  then,  in  the  matter  of  philosophical  knowledge, 
did  not  get  beyond  Hume,  nor  did  he  profess  to  do  so. 
For  him,  as  for  Hume,  the  substantive  nature  of  either 
mind  or  matter  is  beyond  knowledge.  His  utmost  pre- 
tension, in  this  regard,  is  to  show  that  through  an  un- 
fathomable, "magical"  necessity  of  our  "nature,"  we 
miist  consent,  and  be  content,  firmly  to  believe  what  we 
cannot  know.  The  difference  between  Reid  and  Hume  is 
found  chiefly  in  their  psychological  interpretations  of  be- 
lief. Hume  makes  it  to  be  a  phenomenon  of  panoramic 
consciousness.  It  is  a  case  of  special  intensity  in  our 
ideas.  Reid  makes  of  it  a  wholly  mysterious  factor  of  our 
"constitution." 

Reid's   method    (the    "Baconian,"  empirico-psycholo- 

gical  method  of  descriptive  analysis)  and  presupposition 
13 


290  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

(that  appearances,  phenomena,  alone  are  knowable)  being 
the  same  in  nature  as  Hume's,  it  is  not  surprising  that, 
like  Hume,  he  only  arrives  at  the  recognition,  without 
insight,  of  phenomenal  facts.  The  facts  can  be  recog- 
nized and  described;  their  meaning  and  warrant  remain 
shrouded  in  mystery.  The  merit  of  Reid  consists  in  the 
circumstance  that  among  the  facts  recognized  and  em- 
phasized by  him  are  certain  ones  which  really  belong  to 
the  domain  of  the  dynamic,  vital,  philosophic  conscious- 
ness mentioned  in  the  last  chapter.  The  only  conscious- 
ness expressly  known  to  Roid  is  the  sensible,  imaginative, 
representative,  picturesque  consciousness  recognized  by 
Hume.  But  the  facts  in  question,  he  sturdily  and  rightly 
maintains,  do  not  belong  to  such  consciousness,  though, 
for  lack  of  philosophic  insight,  he  is  unable  to  account 
for  them  in  any  other  way  than  by  ascribing  them  to 
"natural  magic" — which  is  not  to  account  for  them  at 
all.  But  on  the  basis  of  these  facts,  beliefs,  or  "principles 
of  common  sense,"  Reid  maintains  very  praiseworthy 
views  in  ethics  and  aesthetics. 

Kant,  in  reply  to  Hume,  makes  (like  Reid)  no  attempt 
to  rescue  the  knowledge  of  reality.  We  know,  he  admits, 
only  phenomena,  which  are  modifications,  however  deter- 
mined, of  mind,  corresponding  to  Hume's  "impressions." 
But  the  order  of  the  concatenation  of  phenomena  in  our 
knowledge  is  not  arbitrary,  as  Hume  had  asserted,  but 
fixed  and  necessary.  Our  knowledge,  as  to  substance,  is 
only  from  and  through  sensible  experience  (external  or 
internal  —  the  "panoramic  consciousness").  But  a  critical 
analysis  of  the  conditions,  upon  which  alone  experience  is 
possible,  shows  that  there  are  known  and  predetermined 
forms  which  it  must  assume,  or  grooves  in  which  it  must 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON".  291 

run.  These  forms,  known  or  cognizable,  a  priori,  as 
necessary  and  universal,  are  the  mechanism  of  mind,  in- 
dependent of  experience,  but  useless  and  without  signifi- 
cance, except  as  applied  to  the  material  of  knowledge 
furnished  in  experience  {i.e.  phenomena,  not  real  "  things 
in  themselves"),  while  yet  determining  the  form,  and  so 
the  possibility,  of  all  experience.  These  forms,  "spon- 
taneous functions  of  the  mind,"  "  categories  of  the  under- 
standing," or  "ideas  of  pure  reason,"  now,  are,  like  Eeid's 
"beliefs,"  works  of  the  dynamic,  vital  consciousness, 
which  is  the  real  organ  of  philosophy,  as  indeed  of  all  real 
knowledge.  In  contrast  with  Eeid's  uncritical  dogma- 
tism, Kant  seeks  with  critical  rigor  to  deduce  them  in 
systematic  completeness,  and  in  all  their  necessity  and 
universality,  from  the  very  nature  of  mental  experience. 
In  this,  it  is  needless  to  say,  he  is  infinitely  superior  to 
Keid.  But,  like  Eeid,  he  shares  in  the  constitutional  in- 
tellectual infirmity,  or  scientific  prejudice,  of  his  century, 
in  being  unable  to  see  in  anything  but  sensible  conscious- 
ness a  possible  type  or  standard  of  reality.  This,  however, 
at  once  reveals  itself  to  Kant,  as  it  always  does,  and  must 
do,  to  all  accurate  inquirers,  as  a  scene,  not  of  reality,  but 
only  of  shadow,  appearance,  or  intrinsic  unreality.  Since, 
then, —  the  argument  proceeds  —  reality  is  inaccessible  to 
human  knowledge,  unless  sensibly  revealed,  it  follows  that 
it,  the  true  "thing-in-itself,"  is  for  us  absolutely  unknow- 
able. Eeal  being,  therefore,  which  empirical  psychology, 
in  spite  of  its  own  demonsti'ation  that  it  cannot  be  an 
object  of  sensible  perception,  still  pertinaciously  conceives 
as  if  it  might  be  an  object  of  such  perception  if  only  our 
senses  were  superhumanly  quickened,  becomes  merely  a 
mysterious  object  of  unintelligent  persuasion  or  belief,  an 


292  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS, 

alleged  "//a"w^-in -itself"  (as  tliougli  it  were  a  sort  of 
transcendental  siiijf),  but,  in  reality,  the  purest  nonsense, 
a  veritable  hodge-podge  of  contradictions.  This  is  the 
valuable  (?)  contribution  to  his  philosophy  which  Kant 
derived  from  his  study  of  British  psychology. 

In  the  light  of  this  ontological  negativism,  Kant's 
forms  of  sense,  functions  of  the  understanding,  ideas  of 
reason  —  in  short,  everything  which  in  mental  experience 
is  demonstrated  to  transcend,  limit,  and  determine  sensu- 
ous consciousness —  become  just  as  mysterious  a$  Reid's 
"beliefs"  or  "principles  of  common  sense."  They  seem 
to  demonstrate  that  mind  is  more  than  a  tabula  rasa 
or  "piece  of  white  paper,"  having  an  independent  nature 
and  reality  of  its  own,  and  being  an  independent  and 
vital  source  of  real,  ideal  activities.  But  now  we  are  told 
that  mind  and  all  its  forms  of  thought  are,  without 
"sensuous  filling,"  empty  and  insubstantial,  a  mask,  a 
spectre.  They  are  somewhat  mythically  described  as 
having  only  "logical,"  not  real  or  ontological,  value  and 
signilicance.  Mind  is  something,  and  it  is  nothing.  It 
is  the  all-efficient  determining  factor  with  reference  to 
the  form  of  knowledge,  but  it  is  a  factor  whose  own 
substance  and  reality  are  reduced  to  the  mere  shadow  of 
a  "point  of  view."  All  this  absurdity  and  jargon  result 
simply  from  the  potent  spell  of  the  sensuous  prejudice 
above  noted. 

But  the  very  fact  that  Kant  in  any  way  recognized 
these  non-sensuous  forms  and  functions  of  mind,  showed 
that  he  was  also  under  another  spell  —  the  spell  of  vital, 
absolute  reality.  In  demonstrating  their  necessary? pres- 
ence in  the  commonest  phases  of  sensible  experience,  he 
was  demonstrating  the  power  and  reality  of  that  only 


SIR  WILLIAM   HAMILTON".  293 

true  (non-sensuous)  type  of  all  real  leing,  which  is  re- 
vealed in  man  as  essential  life,  "energy  of  intelligence," 
ideal  activity,  not  a  merely  passive  state  of  conscious 
feeling,  but  self-conscious  spiritual  doing,  or  dynamic 
self-consciousness.  Kant  demonstrated  that  there  was 
an  intelligible  element  in  mind  and  in  knowledge,  as  well 
as  a  sensible  one.  And  but  a  step  separated  him  from 
the  recognition  of  the  truth,  which  lies,  and  has  always 
lain,  at  the  core  of  all  affirmative  philosophy,  that  the 
intelligible  element  is  the  commanding  one  and  de- 
termines, not  only  the  form  of  phenomenal  knowledge, 
but  also  the  substance  of  real  knowledge  (knowledge  of 
reality).  With  this  unexpressed  truth,  as  with  a  burden, 
Kant's  philosophy  is  heavily  laden.  It  prompts  him 
" practically  "  to  regard  the  reflection,  that  "/ «?;i  think- 
ing" {'' ich  denke"),  as  more  than  a  mere  substanceless 
Vorstellung,  or  idea,  logically  necessary,  indeed,  to  every 
state  of  mental  experience,  but  otherwise,  or  ontologically, 
insignificant,  and  as  noting  the  truth,  evidenced  in  the 
most  immediate  experience,  that  there  is  in  man  a  real 
and  potent  self,  a  personally  identical,  actively  conscious 
spirit.  It  moves  him  to  substitute  for  the  bastard  con- 
ception of  a  "  thing -\\\-\is><i\^,"  as  the  suhstrate  of  phe- 
nomena, the  genuine  and  legitimate  one  of  a  "  noumenon^^ 
or  an  intelligible,  i.e.  ideal,  spiritual  power  and  reality, 
as  the  soul  and  life  of  phenomena.  In  short,  it  dominates 
all  those  positive  "practical"  convictions,  in  his  vigorous 
defense  of  which  (and  not  in  his  "theoretical"  negativ- 
ism) is  to  be  found  the  true  source  of  Kant's  immense 
power  in  the  history  of  thought  and  of  moral  culture. 

For  —  and  this   is  the    final    and  capital  point  to  be 
noted  with  reference  to  Kant  —  while  Kant  (under  the 


294  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

influence  before  indicated)  had  declared  that  the  real  was 
"theoretically"  unknowable,  there  were  certain  practical 
convictions  concerning  it,  of  incalculable  significance, 
which  Kant  regarded  as  absolutely  necessary,  though 
theoretically  indemonstrable  and  inscrutable,  for  consist- 
ent thought.  These  flow,  for  Kant,  especially  and  osten- 
sibly, from  the  nature  of  man's  moral  consciousness, 
and  their  particular  objects  are  God,  and  the  immortal, 
rational,  free  soul  of  man.  But  they  also  flow,  by  none 
the  less  necessary  implication,  from  the  dynamic,  or 
really  positive,  element  iuKant's  critical  theory  of  knowl- 
edge. Accordingly,  when  Kant's  successors  laid  hold 
upon  the  "practical"  side  of  his  doctrine,  and  developed 
a  philosophy,  in  which  supreme  reality  is  ideal,  spiritual, 
divine,  and  the  supremely  real  in  man  is  of  kindred, 
participant  nature,  they  could  justly  claim  to  be  the  true 
continuators  of  Kant.  (It  is  only  to  be  regretted  that 
Berkeley,  nearly  a  century  before,  had  not  found  similar 
"continuators"  in  Great  Britain!) 

Hamilton,  now;,  with  reference  to  the  substance  of  his 
views,  is  the  child  of  Reid  and  Kant.  lie  is  superior  to 
Reid  in  dialectical  agility,  but  far  inferior  to  Kant  in  the 
spirit  of  critical,  patient  and  systematic  thoroughness. 
Under  Kantian  inspiration  he  develops,  in  forms  of  sharp 
outline,  the  self-confessed,  yet  comparatively  unobtrusive, 
theoretical  agnosticism  of  Reid.  Under  the  influence  of 
Reid  and  of  British  psychological  method,  he  emasculates 
the  element  of  virile  idealism,  whichwas  in  Kant.  Shar- 
ing in  the  moral  earnestness  of  both  Reid  and  Kant,  he 
seeks  to  render  his  teaching  subservient  to  the  develop- 
ment of  moral  and  religious  character. 

For  Hamilton,  as  for  Reid  and  Kant,  sensible  conscious- 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON.  295 

ness  furnishes  the  type  or  standard  of  substantive,  or  onto- 
logical  knowledge.  Empirical  consciousness  is  held  to  be 
the  Bible  of  philosophy,  and  in  appealing  to  it  for  answers 
to  ontological  questions,  we  must  remember  that  "here 
understanding  and  imagination  coincide."  What  is  (for 
us)  is  only  what  appears  in  (picturesque,  imaginative, 
panoramic)  consciousness.  But  what  appears  in  conscious- 
ness, is  only  phenomena.  The  ultimately  real  is  therefore, 
for  us,  unknowable.  "  Existence,  absolutely  and  in  itself, 
is  to  us  as  zero."  All  our  knowledge  is  relative,  being 
confined  to  conditioned  existence  {i.e.  existence  "in  special 
modes,"  standing  "  in  a  certain  relation  to  our  faculties," 
and  "under  modifications  determined  by  these -faculties 
themselves")  in  time  and  space.  (To  the  "three  catego- 
ries" of  "conditioned  existence,  time  and  space,"  Hamil- 
ton reduces  Kant's  "  forms  of  sensibility  "  and  "  categories 
of  the  understanding,"  i.e.  he,  in  tendency,  eliminates  the 
dynamic  element  from  Kant,  as  an  empirical  psychologist 
would  be  likely  to  do.) 

This  is  the  famous  law  of  the  Eelativity  of  Knowledge, 
which  is  but  a  new  and  unnecessary  version  of  the  old 
story  concerning  the  incompetence  of  sense  to  penetrate 
to,  or  grasp,  reality.  It  is  the  law  of  the  "  imbecility  "  of 
human  understanding,  and  is  otherwise  stated  and  de- 
fended as  the  "law  of  the  conditioned,"  according  to 
which  the  object  of  all  our  possible  knowledge  is  not  only 
contradictorily  opposed  to  the  absolutely  real  or  uncon- 
ditioned, but  in  a  mean  between  two  contradictorily  op- 
posed varieties  of  the  unconditioned,  of  which,  though 
both  are  inconceivable,  one  or  the  other  must,  by  the 
logical  laws  of  contradiction  and  excluded  middle,  of 
necessity,  be  held  to  be  real  and  existent.     This  alleged 


296  BKITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

logical  constraint  which  we  are  under,  to  believe  what 
we  cannot  conceive,  is  construed  by  Hamilton,  with  some 
impressiveness,  as  teaching  the  "salutary  lesson"  of  faith 
in  the  invisible. 

The  "lesson"  is  indeed  a  salutary  one,  and  is  the  first 
one  to  be  learned  in  philosophy,  as  in  religion.  But  it 
does  not  follow  from  Hamilton's  data  and  arguments. 
The  data  are  all  essentially  sensualistic,  and  the  argu- 
ments sophistical.  And  it  must  be  added  that  the  sub- 
ject of  the  arguments  would  never  occur  to  the  human 
mind,  and  be  made  a  theme  of  inquiry,  if  the  whole  na- 
ture of  mind  were  absorbed  in  sensible,  static  conscious- 
ness. Sense  never  inquires  for  any  reality  transcending 
that  which  is  immediately  presented  to  it  in  phenomena. 
(If  all  our  knowledge  were  really,  as  Hamilton  avers,  but 
a  transcript  of  conditioned  or  phenomenal  consciousness, 
it  would  never  occur  to  us  to  ask  after  the  unconditioned 
or  real.  Such  a  purely  passive,  vegetative  state  of  mind 
would  rest  quite  content  with  itself,  and  not  even  tiie 
circumstance  that  the  "  knowledge  of  contraries  is  one" 
would  furnish  a  sufficiently  powerful  lever  to  lift  it  out  of 
its  drowsy  self-sufficiency  into  a  conception  of,  much  less 
to  incite  it  to  active  inquiry  concerning,  the  "uncondi- 
tioned.") The  fact  that  man  does  raise  such  an  inquiry 
is  direct  evidence  that  he  is  not  wholly  sense,  that  he  is 
not  simply  a  bundle^-of  perceptions  or  impressions,  or  a 
complex  series  of  mere  conscious  states,  but  that  there  is 
a  dynamic  element  in  him,  an  ideal  real  nature,  a  spell  of 
potent  reason,  a  spirit,  for  whose  activity  sense  is  but  tlie 
occasion  and  subsidiary  instrument.  Tlie  works  of  this 
nature  appear  in  the  thought  of  every  man.  They  ob- 
truded  themselves    upon   Hume's    notice,   who    treated 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON".  297 

them,  in  consistent  agreement  with  his  purely  sensational 
empiricism,  as  mere  illusions.  Their  power  and  reality 
were  recognized,  as  we  have  seen,  by  Reid  and  Kant,  who, 
however,  in  consequence  of  their  (conscious  or  uncon- 
scious) sensualistic  prepossessions,  wei'e  unable  to  vindi- 
cate for  them  any  other  than  a  "magical"  origin  or  a 
"practical"  significance.  Hamilton  is  clearly  aware  of 
them,  and  recognizes  them  as  (in  the  Kantian  phrase, 
which  he  imitates)  fruits  of  an  "original  spontaneity  of 
intelligence,"  or  functions  of  the  "regulative  reason." 
These  are  no  merely  phenomenal  states  of  consciousness, 
but  active,  self-illuminating  functions  of  real,  living 
mind.  Their  theoretical  significance  is  of  the  highest 
order,  and  the  questions  which  they  suggest  are  rational 
ones,  relating  to  the  intelligible,  and  not  to  the  sensible; 
to  the  real  and  not  to  the  plienomenal.  It  is  in  the  "real" 
to  which  they  point,  in  which,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
mere  sense,  we  are  religiously  and  practically  bound  to 
have  "  faith,"  but  into  which,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
rational  intelligence,  we  are  bound  to  seek  for  insight. 
This  truth,  as  old  as  philosophy,  the  modern  world, 
blinded  and  confused  by  mathematico-scientific  prejudice, 
has  had  theoretically  to  learn  anew.  Hume  startled  the 
world  into  reflection  upon  the  snbject,  and  Reid,  Kant 
and  Hamilton  are  engaged  in  the  unsuccessful  throes  of 
the  endeavor  to  unlearn  the  Humian  prejudices  of  their 
age  with  reference  to  it,  and  to  arrive  at  a  clear  appre- 
hension and  enunciation  of  the  truth  in  question.  Ham- 
ilton struggles  and  com})orts  himself  in  tliem  like  an 
intellectual  athlete.  But  the  tenacity  with  which  he 
clings  to  the  old  sensualistic  prejudice,  while  yet  under 
the  (for  him)  theoretically  inscrutable  charm  of  the  old, 


298  BRITISH   THOUGHT  AND   THINKERS. 

yet  ever  new,  because  ever  present,  rational  inspiration,  is 
the  very  reason  why  he,  more  conspicuously  even  than 
Kant,  falls  into  a  maze  of  contradiction  and  absurdity. 

The  Unconditioned,  Infinite,  or  Absolute  (Hamilton's 
names  for  the  ultimate  and  real)  is  a  rational  conception. 
As  such  it  is  inconceivable,  except  as  a  rational  object,  or, 
in  other  words,  as  a  spirit,  as  God.  Naturally,  such  an 
object  is  not  sensibly  perceivable,  any  more  than  music  is 
visible.  The  whole  burden  of  his  ontology  is,  that,  be- 
cause not  sensibly  perceivable  or  imaghiable,  it  is  unknow- 
able. Yet  all  his  arguments  concerning  the  Unconditioned 
are  founded  on  the  supposition  that  it  is  and  must  be  thus 
"conceivable."  *  The  "  Infinite"  and  "Absolute"  of  Ham- 
ilton's discussions  are  the  Pseudo-Infinite  and  the  Pseudo- 
Absolute  of  space  and  time.  Space  and  time  are,  for 
Hamilton,  as  for  others,  characteristic  forms  of  sense,  of 
phenomenal  consciousness,  of  conditioned  existence.  Ham- 
ilton's arguments  would  persuade  us  that  they  are  forms 
of  the  "Unconditioned,"  or  of  ultimate,  supreme  reality, 
and  our  "  faith"  in  God,  so  far  as  they  are  concerned,  is 
made  to  depend  upon  the  alleged  logical  constraint  wliich 
is  laid  upon  us,  to  admit  that  the  intrinsically  unimagi- 
nable would  be  imaginable,  if  only  our  imaginations  were 
not  so  unfortunately  "imbecile."  It  is  only  on  account 
of  the  frailty  of  our  "  minds"  that  the  inherently  non- 
phenomenal  does  not  become  for  us  a  conscious  phe- 
nomenon. This  is,  in  effect,  but  the  reappearance  of  the 
Kantian  (or,  for  that  matter,  the  Lockian,  and  in  general, 
the  psychological)  conception  of  a"  Mm^-in-itself,"  i.e.  a 
time-and-space  object  which  is  not  a  time-and-space  ob- 

*  It  is  important  to  note,  in  reading  autiiors  like  Hamilton.  Mill,  and  Spencer, 
that  for  them  the  conceivable  means  the  imaginable,  and  the  inconceivable  the 
unimaginable. 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON".  299 

ject,  a  phenomenal  reality  which  is  essentially  non-phe- 
nomenal. It  is  the  phenomenal  trying  to  be  its  own 
double,  the  shadow  seeking  to  find  in  itself  substance. 
That,  under  these  circumstances,  the  "Unconditioned" 
should  appear  to  Hamilton  as  "  a  fasciculus  of  contradic- 
tions," is  not  astonishing! 

I  do  not  stop  to  show  otherwise  in  detail  the  inconclu- 
siveness  of  the  arguments  by  which  Hamilton  would  force 
us  to  believe  in  such  a  "fasciculus"  of  absurdities.  If  the 
problem  is  contradictory  in  terms,  if  it  proposes  to  find 
life  in  death  and  essential  reality  in  essential  phenom- 
enality,  it  is  obvious  that  the  "  reasonings  "  employed,  if 
at  all  specious,  must  be  correspondingly  sophistical.  I 
only  remark  that,  if  the  "Unconditioned,"  in  the  terms 
proposed  by  Hamilton,  is  inconceivable  and  irrational,  this 
fact  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  possibility  that  the  Un- 
conditioned, as  living  Spirit,  may  be  a  clear  object  of 
rational  intelligence. 

The  same  dominance  of  sensualistic  or  "  scientific " 
prejudice,  in  treating  of  rational  or  philosophical  problems, 
is  illustrated  in  Hamilton's  views  concerning  causation. 
The  kind  of  causation  which  he  has  in  mind  in  his  dis- 
cussions is  that  secondary  or  quasi-causality  which  is 
contemplated  in  the  physical  science  of  phenomena,  where 
life  and  efficiency  are  systematically  kept  out  of  view,  and 
attention  is  directed  only  to  the  order  of  succession  among 
phenomena  or  to  the  mathematical  equivalence  of  success- 
ive states  or  aspects  of  phenomena.  Naturally,  when  with 
this  conception  Hamilton  approaches  the  problem  of 
divine,  i.e.  real,  spiritual,  efiicient  causation,  he  reaches 
conclusions,  for  the  necessity  of  accepting  which  agnosti- 
cism furnishes  a  welcome  substitute. 


300  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

The  same  prejudice,  finally,  leads  him  to  look  upon  the 
problem  of  sensible  perception  (the  perception  of  "exter- 
nal objects")  as  the  cardinal  problem  of  philosophy  (!), 
and  to  propound  concerning  it  opinions  full  of  contradic- 
tion and  confusion. 

But  enough  on  this  point,  my  only  object  here  being 
to  indicate  in  general  outline  the  intellectual  attitude  of 
Hamilton  with  reference  to  philosophical  problems.  The 
real  source  of  Hamilton's  strength  and  of  his  widely  dif- 
fused and  quickening  influence  is  to  be  found,  as  in  the 
case  of  Kant,  in  his  practical,  urgent  recognition  of  that 
dynamic,  ideal  side  of  mind  and  life,  which,  as  an  instru- 
ment of  literal,  theoretical  cognition,  he  was  unable  to 
turn  to  any  account.  To  this  should  be  added  the  con- 
tagion of  his  dialectical  ardor  and  the  example  of  his 
immense  erudition.  His  defect  is,  that  he  docs  not  raise 
philosophy  out  of  that  quagmire  of  psychology  in  which 
(under  Kantian  inspiration  ?)  he  recognized  that  it  was 
sunk.  He  complained  of  the  substitution  of"  superficial 
psychology"  for  "metaphysics,"  and  the  complaint  holds 
good  against  himself.  In  this  respect  his  friend  and 
younger  contemporary,  James  Ferrier,  buildcd  better 
than  he. 

Twelve  years  before  his  death  Hamilton  was  afflicted 
with  a  stroke  of  paralysis,  from  the  effects  of  which  he 
never  recovered.  His  mind  remained,  however,  to  the 
last  unimpaired.  At  times  his  lectures  had  to  be  read  by 
another,  standing  in  his  place.  At  other  times  he  would 
be  assisted  to  his  chair  and  read  half  of  the  lecture.  At 
home  various  literary  tasks  were  on  his  hands,  and  under 
the  gentle  pressure  of  his  wile's  monitions,  or  the  more 
weighty  stress  of  some  practical  necessity,  were  carried 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON".  301 

fitfully  forward.  At  last  the  brain,  unnaturally  tasked 
for  so  many  years,  gave  way.  Congestion  of  the  brain 
set  in,  and  the  strong  man  was  laid  low  in  death,  May  6, 
1856. 

In  the  last  hour  of  his  conscious  life  he  gave  utterance 
to  the  trust  on  which  his  heart  was  stayed,  in  those  words 
of  the  Hebrew  psalmist,  grand  in  their  simple  beauty  and 
inexhaustible  significance,  "Thy  rod  and  thy  staff,  they 
comfort  me."  The  best  spirit  of  his  life  and  work  is 
expressed  in  the  following  words,  inscribed  upon  his 
tombstone : 

"  His  aim  was,  by  a  pure  philosophy,  to  teach  that  now  we  see 
through  a  glass  darkly,  now  we  know  in  part;  his  hope  that,  in  the 
life  to  come,  he  should  see  face  to  face,  and  know  even  as  also  he  is 
known," 


CHAPTER  XI. 

JOHN  STUART  MILL. 

John  Stuart  Mill  was  preeminently  his  father's 
son.  Doubtless,  in  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  every 
man,  regarded  purely  as  a  scientific  phenomenon,  or  in 
what  may  be  termed  the  visible,  historic  or  natural,  as 
distinguished  from  the  invisible  or  spiritual  character  of 
every  one,  there  will  be  found  a  more  or  less  complete 
correlation  with  his  intellectual  and  moral  environment. 
To  this  extent  he  is  said  to  be  the  product  of  his  circum- 
stances. Education,  as  it  is  perhaps  oftenest  understood, 
namely,  in  the  sense  of  training,  consists  precisely  in  the 
adjustment  of  circumstances,  the  shaping  of  environment, 
in  the  hope  of  bringing  forth  the  type  of  empirical  char- 
acter which  corresponds,  by  natural  or  habitual  correla- 
tion, to  the  means  employed;  and  this  in  distinction  from, 
and  to  the  exclusion  of,  that  other,  more  profound,  more 
essential  and,  indeed,  indispensable  part  of  true  educa- 
tion, which  lies  in  the  awakening  and  stimulating  of  free, 
vital  powers,  through  the  enkindling  communication  of 
the  sparks  of  a  genuine  ideal  life  from  the  educator.  The 
former,  or  drill,  method  is  the  one  which  is  peculiarly 
adapted  for  application  in  the  case  of  brutes  —  creatures 
mostly  susceptible  only  of  a  purely  mechanical  culture  — 
and  if  one  would  witness  its  results  in  their  purest,  most 
unmixed  form,  the  best  course  is  to  visit  a  menagerie,  or 
any  other  place  where  trained  animals  are  exhibited. 
Very  admirable,  we  willingly  exclaim  on  witnessing  these 

803 


JOHIT   STUART  MILL.  303 

results — very  curious,  and  reflecting  great  credit  on  the 
ingenuity  of  the  trainer.  But  it  will  hardly  occur  to  us 
to  confound  the  process  to  which  the  brute  beasts  have 
been  subjected  with  what  is  termed  education,  and  to 
speak  of  educated  birds,  horses,  monkeys,  etc.  Only  hu- 
man beings  are  capable  of  education,  and  that  because,  in 
their  case  alone,  in  order  to  educe,  and  in  its  full  measure 
to  call  forth  into  actuality,  the  truly  human  element 
within,  with  all  its  wealth  of  diviner  possibilities,  some- 
thing more  is  necessary  than  simply  to  catch  your  subjects, 
and  then  to  tame  and  drill  them.  Hence  the  pedagogue 
whose  excellences  are  exclusively  those  of  the  disciplina- 
rian is  no  true  educator,  and  I  do  not  wonder  that  he  is 
cordially  hated  of  all  youth ;  at  the  most,  he  only  supplies 
the  negative  condition  of  education  —  a  condition,  indeed, 
whose  urgent  necessity  is  not  only  freely  to  be  admitted,  but 
most  earnestly  to  be  insisted  upon ;  yet,  after  all,  only  a 
condition,  or  background,  not  the  essence  of  education. 
The  latter  is  only  accomplished,  in  the  highest  sense, 
when  the  soul  is  awakened  to  the  consciousness  of  an 
ideal  purpose,  as  that  which  constitutes  the  radicle  of  its 
own  nature  —  of  a  possibility  or  possibilities  of  character 
and  life,  the  realization  of  which  is  incumbent  upon  itself 
and  must  be  its  own  essentially  free  work,  and,  in  general, 
when  acquisition  (knowledge,  whether  theoretical  or  prac- 
tical, obtained  by  the  way  of  direct  literal  communication) 
has,  through  the  force  of  active,  re-creative  mental  labor, 
turned  to  insight  and  acquired  the  virtual  quality  of  an 
original,  living  and  lasting  possession  (according  to  the 
phrase  of  Goethe, 

"Was  du  ererbt  von  deinen  Vatern  hast, 
Erwirb  es,  um  es  zu  besitzen  "). 


304  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

Education,  in  any  proper  sense,  is  thus  essentially  the 
pupil's  own  work.  "Horse-taming  Hector"  must  also  be 
his  own  tamer,  would  he  be  effectually  and  to  best  pur- 
pose tamed.  (The  true  educator,  accordingly,  is  restricted 
to  the  employment  of  indirect  means.)  Or  rather,  as  I 
believe,  he  accomplishes  his  best,  really  educating  work 
without  the  conscious  or  intentional  employment  of  any 
means,  but  rather  through  the  spontaneous,  enkindling 
flashings  of  his  own  life — his  own  "energy  of  reason," 
his  own  "energy  of  love." 

It  follows,  from  all  that  has  been  said,  that  any  attempt 
to  apply  to  a  human  being  the  drill  method,  pure  and 
simple,  must  always  be  attended  with  an  element  of  un- 
certainty in  its  results,  since  it  leaves  out  of  the  reckon- 
ing that  most  important  of  all  factors,  the  moral  freedom, 
the  free,  creative  intelligence,  of  the  pupil,  which  is  liable 
at  any  moment  to  take  matters  into  its  own  hands,  and 
thus  to  upset  the  most  confident  calculations  of  the 
would-be  trainer.  Still  the  method  is  sometimes  used 
with  fearful  success,  the  consequence  then  being  that  the 
free  soul  of  the  pupil  is  blinded  and  dazed  —  eftectually 
held  captive  —  and  that  the  man  becomes  a  machine,  or, 
at  most,  a  parrot.  John  Stuart  Mill  spoke  out  of  an 
abundant  experience  wlien  he  said,  "  The  power  of  educa- 
tion [training]  is  almost  boundless"  (Essays  on  Religion, 
p.  8-2). 

For,  in  a  very  peculiar  sense,  John  Stuart  Mill  was 
the  result  of  a  deliberate  course  of  training,  and  that  at 
the  hands  of  one  —  his  father — whose  philosophy  wholly 
excluded  from  recognition  the  human  soul  and  human 
freedom,  and  who,  accordingly,  regarded  education  wholly 
as  an  affair  of  drill.    We  shall  thus  find  the  younger  Mill 


JOHN    STUART   MILL.  305 

bearing  very  conspicuously  the  marks  of  a  machine-made, 
in  distinction  from  a  self-made,  man.  At  the  same  time 
we  shall  find  that  the  independent,  personal,  vital  factor 
in  him,  though  permanently  obfuscated,  was  (naturally) 
not  annihilated,  and  that  its  rather  blind,  but  most  ear- 
nest and  most  persistent,  attempts  to  assert  itself  are  the 
source  of  all  that  is  most  interesting  in  his  life,  and  most 
significant  (though  also  most  confusing,  because  appar- 
ently most  contradictory)  in  his  philosophy.  We  must 
first,  now,  consider  what  sort  of  a  man  his  trainer  was. 

The  father  of  John  Stuart  Mill  was  a  Scotchman.  His 
grandfather  was  a  master  shoemaker,  doing  at  one  time  a 
prosperous  business  at  Northwater  Bridge,  a  small  hamlet, 
where  his  children  were  born.  The  eldest  of  these,  James 
Mill  (the  name  seems  to  have  been  spelt,  indifferently. 
Mill  or  Milne),  born  in  1773,  showing  excellent  capacities, 
it  was  determined  that  he  should  receive  more  than  a 
common  education.  It  seems  to  have  been  his  mother  — 
described  as  a  "  proud  woman,"  descended  from  an  his- 
toric, but  latterly  unfortunate,  family  —  who  especially 
insisted  upon  this,  and  did  everything  in  her  power  to 
smooth  the  way  for  her  son.  Doubtless,  too,  the  father,  a 
man  of  rigorous  Scotch  piety,  would  enter  sympathetically 
into  the  project,  in  the  hope  that  his  son,  provided  with 
due  learning,  might  become  a  pillar  of  the  kirk  in  its 
public  ministry.  At  all  events,  through  the  efforts  of  his 
parents  (principally,  if  not  exclusively)  he  was  provided 
with  a  sufficient  preliminary  education,  and  subsequently 
through  the  favor  of  Lady  Jane  Stuart  (whose  husband's 
name  reappears  in  the  name  of  the  principal  subject  of 
this  chapter),  he  was  enabled  to  go  through  a  course  of 
study  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  with  a  view  to 


806  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

entering  the  ministry.  In  due  time  he  was  licensed  to 
preach,  but,  not  obtaiuing  an  appointment  to  his  liking, 
repaired,  in  the  year  1802,  in  the  company  of  Sir  John 
Stuart,  to  London,  there  to  begin  the  career  of  an  un- 
usually energetic  literary  Bohemian.  For  a  period  of 
seventeen  years  he  maintained  an  incessant  activity  as 
newspaper  editor,  review  writer,  translator  and  author; 
earning,  a  part  of  the  time,  a  rather  precarious  subsist- 
ence, as  is  shown  by  the  following  query,  addressed  by 
him  to  a  friend  in  Scotland,  in  a  letter  written  five  years 
after  his  coming  to  London  (Feb.  7,  1807),  and  which  I 
cite  for  the  additional  reason  that  it  shows  that  the  writer 
was  not  yet  conscious  of  any  insuperable  moral  or  intel- 
lectual difficulty,  separating  him  from  tlie  christian  min- 
istry. The  query  runs,  "Have  you  no  good  kirk  yet  in 
your  neighbourhood,  which  you  could  give  me,  and  free 
me  from  this  life  of  toil  and  anxiety  which  I  lead  here?" 
Meanwhile  he  bore  witness  to  the  fact  of  his  participation 
in  our  common  human  nature  by  falling  (presumably)  in 
love,  getting  married  (at  any  rate),  and  proceeding  to  rear 
a  large  family,  "conduct  than  which,"  says  his  son  in  his 
autobiography  —  in  view  of  the  circumstance  that  he  had 
"no  resource  but  the  precarious  one  of  writing  in  period- 
icals"— "nothing  could  be  more  opposed,  both  as  a  matter 
of  good  sense  and  of  duty,  to  the  opinions  which,  at  least 
at  a  later  period  of  life,  he  strenuously  upheld."  This 
marriage  took  place  in  the  year  1805,  and  on  the  20th  of 
May  in  the  following  year  John  Stuart,  the  first  of  eight 
children,  was  born. 

Two  years  later  James  Mill  formed  an  acquaintance 
through  which  a  decisive  influence  was  exerted  upon  the 
subsequent  turn  of  his  mind  and  character.    This  was 


JOHN  STUART  MILL.  307 

the  acquaintance  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  the  noted  projector 
of  law  reforms  (concerning  whicli,  it  is  interesting  and 
characteristic  to  note,  he  put  himself,  somewhat  quixotic- 
ally, in  direct  personal  communication  not  only  with  the 
crowned  heads  of  Europe,  but  also  with  the  President  and 
the  several  Governors  of  the  United  States),  and  famous  as 
the  defender  of  utilitarianism  in  ethics.  Bentham  was  an 
eighteenth-century  type  of  character,  lasting  way  over  into 
the  nineteenth.  Him  the  spirit  of  the  self-styled  era  of 
enlightenment  possessed,  the  spirit  which  prided  itself  on 
its  freedom  from  illusions,  and  whose  greatest  illusion  was 
just  this  pride.  He  was  a  Philistine  a  outrance,  who 
thought  that  all  that  mankind  needed  to  know,  and,  duly 
viewed,  all  that  they  were  really  able  to  know,  was  on 
what  side  their  bread  was  buttered,  and  that  if  renounc- 
ing all  pretense  of  any  other,  more  exalted  knowledge, 
and  trampling  on  the  abuses  directly  or  indirectly  shel- 
tered under  such  pretense,  they  would  keep  to  what  they 
had,  namely,  to  sensible  matter  of  fact,  and  make  the  most 
of  it,  human  life  would  acquire  the  priceless  advantage  of 
assuming  a  scientific  form  and  become  one  uniform  mass 
of  sensible  felicity.  Bentham  belongs  preeminently  to 
the  class  of  intellectual  cave-dwellers  who  deny  the  light 
which  fails  to  reach  them.  I  speak  now,  naturally,  of 
Bentham,  having  reference  primarily  to  his  universal  or,  if 
you  please,  philosophical  point  of  view,  to  the  metaphys- 
ical assumptions  (or  denials)  which  fix  the  limits  of  his 
conception  of  the  world  and  of  human  life.  And  this  I 
do,  not  without  reason,  surely:  for  has  not  J.  S.  Mill  told 
us,  in  his  essay  on  Bentham,  that  the  "  first  question  in 
regard  to  any  man  of  speculation  is.  What  is  his  theory  of 
human  life  ?  "     I  am  not,  therefore,  concerned  to  discuss 


308  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

—  far  less  still  to  deny  —  the  value  of  any  services  which 
Bentham  may  have  rendered  in  the  correction  of  practical 
abuses  in  law  and  judicial  practice,  or  in  the  suggestion 
of  better  forms  of  law  and  procedure.  Nor  would  I  have 
Bentham  deprived  of  any  credit  due  him  for  his  political 
liberalism  and  practical  philanthropy.  I  say  only  that 
Bentham,  first  through  the  reading  of  Helv6tius  (accord- 
ing to  his  own  confession),  and  then  of  Hume,  Hartley, 
Priestley,  and  Paley,  was  led  to  the  adoption  of  principles 
which  he  thus  unequivocally  expresses  at  the  beginning 
of  his  introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legis- 
lation: "Nature  has  placed  mankind  under  the  govern- 
ance of  two  sovereign  masters,  pain  and  j)leasure.  It  is 
for  them  alone  to  point  out  what  we  ouglit  to  do,  as  well 
as  to  determine  Avhat  we  shall  do.  On  the  one  hand,  the 
standard  of  right  and  wrong,  on  the  other  the  chain  of 
causes  and  effects,  are  fastened  to  their  throne."  This 
is  the  metaphysical  —  or  quasi-metaphysical  —  kernel  of 
Benthamism. 

James  Mill,  being  introduced  to  Bentham  and  to  the 
small  circle  of  Bcntham's  intimate  friends,  soon  became  one 
of  his  most  ardent  and  unconipromising  disciples,  —  in- 
deed, by  general  admission,  the  foremost  and  ablest  of  them. 
On  the  other  hand,  Bentham  was  equally  attracted  by 
Mill,  desiring  much  of  his  company,  and  being  able, 
througii  his  pecuniary  independence,  to  secure  it  by  means 
which,  in  addition  to  their  adaptation  to  this  immediate 
end,  were  also  well  fitted  (whether  thus  intended  or  not) 
to  foster  in  Mill  a  sense  of  material  obligation,  if  not  even 
of  dependence.  At  his  invitation,  Mill,  with  his  family, 
for  a  number  of  successive  summers,  resided  with  Ben- 
tham several  months  as  his  guests,  in  the  country.    Be- 


JOHN   STUART   MILL.  309 

sides,  Bentham  bought  a  valuable  house  near  his  own  city 
residence  and  rented  it  to  Mill  for  the  same  price  that  he 
had  been  paying  for  inferior  quarters  elsewhere.  In  the 
society  of  Bentham  and  his  friends  Mill  soon  fell  into 
practical  atheism,  and,  in  philosophy,  into  unqualified 
sensationalism.  God,  religion,  ideal  obligations,  love, 
privilege,  were  obsolete  ideas,  pernicious  myths,  preju- 
dices. Nothing  was  known,  or  knowable,  or  certain,  but 
sensations.  As  a  student  at  Edinburgh,  James  Mill  had 
already  shown  a  marked  interest  in  philosophical  subjects. 
The  lectures  of  Dugald  Stewart  on  psychology  and  moral 
science  had  fascinated  him.  Prof.  Bain  has  been  able,  by 
consulting  old  registers  of  the  University  Library,  to  ascer- 
tain what  books  he  drew  from  the  library  while  a  student. 
Among  these  are  many  books  on  philosophical  topics,  and 
it  is  especially  curious  to  notice  that  the  record  of  books 
drawn  and  studied  by  Mill  contains  evidence  that,  in 
Prof.  Bain's  phrase,  he  made  at  this  time  a  "dead  set  at 
Plato."  The  form  which  his  matured  views  finally  as- 
sumed was  anything  but  Platonic;  it  was,  indeed,  abso- 
lutely anti-Platonic;  yet  it  affords  touching  evidence  of 
the  fascination  exerted  over  him  by  the  golden-tongued 
ancient  master,  that  in  directing  the  education  of  his 
eldest  son  special  stress  was  laid  by  him  on  the  study  of 
Plato,  and  apparently  of  Plato  alone  among  the  ancient 
philosophers,  and  that  in  the  final  exposition  of  his  own 
views  (in  the  work  entitled  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of 
the  Human  Mind)  he  defends  Plato  against  the  alleged 
mysticism  of  his  expositors,  in  the  conviction  that  the 
real,  original  Plato  agreed  with  him  —  with  Mill,  the  direct 
intellectual  descendant  of  Hume  and  Hartley,  and  their 
continuator  —  the    uncompromisingly    idealistic    realist 


310  BUITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

with  the  no  less  uncompromisingly  sensationalistic  nom- 
inalist! (J.  S.  Mill  expresses  a  somewhat  similar  view  in 
his  Autobiography,  p.  22.) 

Before  finishing  with  James  Mill,  it  will  be  necessary, 
for  the  sake  of  properly  characterizing  both  himself  and 
the  intellectual  heritage  to  wliich  he  was  determined  that 
his  son  should  succeed,  to  say  a  word  concerning  his  work 
just  mentioned,  and  concerning  the  important,  but,  till 
lately  (and  then  principally  through  the  filial  labors  of 
J.  S.  Mill)  insufficiently  recognized  place  occupied  by 
James  Mill  in  the  history  of  Britisli  speculation.  Hume, 
it  will  be  remembered,  had  reduced  mind  to  a  series  of 
impressions  and  ideas,  themselves  so  many  distinct  exist- 
ences, which  were  variously  combined  under  the  operation 
of  certain  recognizable,  but  otherwise  inexplicable,  prin- 
ciples of  association.  After  him,  though  still  in  Hume's 
lifetime,  but  without  any  acknowledged  reference  to  the 
particular  suggestions  of  Hume,  David  Hartley,  a  pious 
but  somewhat  heretical  physician,  applied  himself  to  show, 
in  detail,  how  the  mental  nature  of  man  could  be  fully 
explained  —  sensations  only  being  given  —  according  to 
purely  meclianical  laws  of  association,  themselves  founded 
on  alleged  laws  of  vibration  in  the  "  white  medullary  sub- 
stance of  the  brain,  medullary  substance,  and  nerves  which 
proceed  from  them."  Curiously  enough,  the  application 
which  Hartley  made  of  this  doctrine  was  —  not  to  demon- 
strate that  nothing  but  sensations  and  their  laws  of  asso- 
ciation can  be  known,  —  but  that  nothing  is  either  really 
known  or  exists  but  God :  man,  as  an  independent  or 
quasi-independent  being,  is  an  illusion;  he  is,  in  Spino- 
zistic  phrase,  but  a  mode  of  God,  who,  in  fact,  is  strictly 
"all  in  all."    Hartley's  doctrine   respecting  association 


JOHN"   STUART   MILL.  311 

was  adopted  and,  against  the  Scotch  common-sense  school, 
vigorously  defended  by  Dr.  Jos.  Priestley,  the  Unitarian 
divine,  who  occupies  so  honorable  a  place  as  a  discoverer 
and  experimenter  in  chemical  science.  It  is  this  doctrine, 
re^ngrafted  —  obviously  without  difficulty — upon  Hume's 
metaphysical  negativism,  which  James  Mill  took  up  and 
further  developed,  and  to  which  he  gave  classic  expression 
in  his  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind  —  written  in  the 
summer  holidays  of  the  years  1823  to  1829,  when  J.  S. 
Mill  was  seventeen  to  twenty-three  years  of  age,  and  pub- 
lished in  1829.  There  is  in  the  book  an  affectation  of 
simplicity,  amounting  sometimes  almost  to  positive  puer- 
ility, and  suggesting  distinctly  the  tone  of  a  father  ad- 
dressing children  whom  it  is  especially  necessary  to  guard 
against  any  possible  danger  of  illusion.  We  have  here 
unquestionably  the  reflex  of  some  of  the  instructions  pre- 
viously dinned  by  the  father  into  the  son's  young  ears, 
the  substance  of  fundamental  opinions  which  it  was  meant 
—  and  not  in  vain  —  that  the  son  should  accept  as  com- 
mon-places not  to  be  questioned.  The  book  adds  nothing 
to  what  had  been  previously  said  by  Hume  and  Hartley 
(and  Bentham),  except  a  peculiar  ingenuity  of  develop- 
ment, a  more  complete  systematic  form,  and  a  delusive 
appearance  of  perspicuity,  along  with  a  resolute  consist- 
ency, which  fears  no  consequences.  Our  knowledge,  it  is 
held,  is  only  of  sensations  and  the  mechanical  laws  of  their 
coexistence  and  sequence.  Such  conceptions  as  substantial 
existence  and  power  are  names,  at  most,  for  our  ignorance. 
Science,  for  the  most  part,  consists  only  of  skillful  con- 
trivances for  naming  our  sensations.  We  shall  see  how 
faithful  the  son  remained,  or  sought  to  remain,  to  these 
instructions. 


312  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

I  will  only  add,  concerning  James  Mill,  that  he  pos- 
sessed, in  addition  to  an  ample  fund  of  native  Scotch 
probity  and  thrift,  indomitable  mental  energy  and  indus- 
try, and  was  resolved  to  exact  the  same,  with  interest, 
from  his  children.  His  manner  with  them  was  stern,  and 
even  repellent.  "After  John,"  says  Prof.  Bain,  "the  next 
elder  children  seem  to  have  disappointed  him,  and  he 
never  looked  upon  them  with  any  complacency."  "His 
entering  the  room  where  the  family  was  assembled  was 
observed  by  strangers  to  operate  as  an  immediate  damper. 
This  was  not  the  worst.  The  one  really  disagreeable  trait 
in  [James]  Mill's  character,  and  the  thing  that  has  left 
the  most  painful  memories,  was  the  way  that  he  allowed 
himself  to  speak  and  behave  to  his  wife  and  children 
before  visitors"  (Mind,  No.  VHI,  Oct.  1877). 

This  was  the  man,  and  such  as  above  described  were 
the  principles  and  attachments  of  the  man,  who,  a  son 
being  given  him,  was  resolved  so  to  educate  him  —  so  to 
make  his  mind  (to  adapt  the  language  employed  by  the 
elder  Mill)  —  that  he  miglit  be  "a  worthy  successor"  of 
both  himself  and  Bentham  (letter  to  Bentham  in  1812). 
"It  was  a  bold  hope,  but  one  destined  to  be  fully  real- 
ized," says  Fox  Bourne  (in  a  sketch  of  J.  S.  Mill's  life), 
who  also  remarks  upon  the  "jealous  interest"  with  which 
Bentham  appears  to  have  watched  the  boy's  education. 
The  father,  in  addition  to  labors  of  the  most  engrossing 
kind,  took  his  son's  training  into  his  own  hand,  and  gave 
him  a  hot-bed  education,  the  like  of  Whicli  has,  I  fancy, 
rarely  been  known.  With  the  details  of  it,  as  given  in  J. 
S.  Mill's  autobiography,  many  are  already  acquainted. 
New  information  respecting  it  has  lately  been  presented 
to  the  world  by  Prof.  Bain  (in  recent  numbers  of  "  Mind"). 


JOHJf    STUART   MILL.  Sl3 

The  whole  is  simply  amazing.  At  the  age  of  three  years 
(so  people  told  him ;  at  all  events  when  he  was  so  young 
that  in  after  years  he  could  not  recall  the  time)  he  began 
to  learn  Greek,  by  means  of  "  lists  of  common  Greek 
words,  with  their  signification  in  English,"  written  out 
for  him  on  cards  by  his  father.  By  the  time  he  was  eight 
years  old  he  had  read  ^sop's  Fables,  the  whole  or  a  part 
of  Xenophon's  Anabasis,  the  whole  of  Herodotus  and  of 
Xenophon's  Cyropsedia  and  Memorials  of  Socrates,  some 
of  the  lives  of  the  philosophers  by  Diogenes  Laertius,  part 
of  Lucian,  two  orations  of  Isocrates,  and  six  dialogues  of 
Plato.  Of  these  latter,  Mill  remarks  that  one  of  them,  at 
least,  might  better,  in  his  judgment,  have  been  omitted, 
as  it  was  totally  impossible  that  he  should  understand  it. 
But,  he  continues,  "my  father,  in  all  his  teaching,  de- 
manded of  me  not  only  the  utmost  that  I  could  do,  but 
much  that  I  could  by  no  possibility  have  done."  It  is 
only  fair  to  add  that  the  father  was  himself  ready  to  per- 
form what  would  have  seemed  for  him  —  an  exceedingly 
impatient  man  —  next  to  impossible,  namely,  in  the  ab- 
sence, at  that  date,  of  Greek-English  lexicons,  to  serve 
patiently,  himself,  as  a  lexicon  for  his  son,  who,  sitting  at 
the  same  table  where  his  father  was  engaged  in  the  long 
and  serious  labor  of  writing  his  history  of  British  India, 
and  in  other  literary  occupations,  was  permitted  at  any 
moment  to  interrupt  him  for  the  purpose  of  asking  the 
meaning  of  a  new  Greek  word.  In  addition  to  this  Greek 
reading,  evening  lessons  in  arithmetic  were  given  him  by 
his  father.  Further,  he  was  left  free  a  considerable  time, 
and  encouraged  to  read  English  books  according  to  his 
taste.  These  were  mostly  histories,  including  Eobertson, 
Hume,  Gibbon,  Watson's  Philip  the  Second  and  Third, 
14 


814  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

Hooke's  History  of  Rome,  a  portion  of  Rollin's  Ancient 
History,  Plutarch  (translated),  Burnett's  History  of  his 
Own  Time,  the  historical  part  of  the  Annual  Register 
down  to  1788 ;  all  this  on  his  own  account ;  then,  further, 
by  his  father's  direction,  Millar's  Historical  View  of  the 
English  Government,  Mosheim's  Ecclesiastical  History, 
McCrie's  Life  of  John  Knox,  and  Sewell's  and  Rutty's 
Histories  of  the  Quakers.  As  he  read  he  made  notes  of 
the  subject-matter  on  slips  of  paper,  which  served  as 
memoranda  for  the  report  his  father  required  him  daily 
to  give  of  his  reading,  while  they  were  taking  their  morn- 
ing walk  before  breakfast.  At  the  same  time  his  father 
would  discuss  with  him  the  subjects  of  his  reading,  and 
in  particular  he  used,  says  Mill,  "as  opportunity  offered, 
to  give  me  explanations  and  ideas  respecting  civilization, 
government,  morality,  mental  cultivation,  which  he  re- 
quired me  afterwards  to  restate  to  him  in  my  own  words." 
Thus  at  an  age  when  most  boys  are  rolling  hoops,  flying 
kites,  learning  their  letters,  or,  at  most,  reading  story- 
books, with  words  of  one  or  two  syllables,  Mill  was  deeply 
immersed  in  ancient  history  and  philosophy,  as  well  as  in 
modern  history  and  the  rudiments  of  his  father's  philoso- 
phy. A  few  works  of  travel,  it  is  true,  were  placed  in  his 
hands  by  his  father,  and  read  by  him  with  great  satisfac- 
tion. Of  playthings  he  had  none;  of  children's  books 
only  one,  Robinson  Crusoe,  in  which  we  may  imagine 
that  he  took  a  doubly  intense  delight,  after  all  that  had 
practically  been  done  to  wean  and  starve  whatever  boyish 
fancy  he  may  have  had.  He  was  also  permitted  to  read, 
from  borrowed  copies,  Arabian  Nights,  Gazette's  Arabian 
Tales,  Don  Quixote,  Miss  Edgeworth's  Popular  Tales,  and 
Brooke's  Fool  of  Quality.   It  will  be  admitted  that  all  this 


JOHN    STUART   MILL.  315 

was  a  great  deal  to  have  been  done  by  one  scarcely  more 
than  a  prattling  infant.  Mill's  youthful  brain  was  a 
docile  and  effective  engine,  which  wrought  mechanical 
wonders  under  the  direction  of  so  untiring  and  exacting 
an  engineer  as  his  father.  It  was  a  case  of  high  pressure 
training,  if  not  of  soul-emancipating  and  soul-enlarging 
education.  That,  of  which  the  absence  is  most  painfully 
felt,  is  the  encouragement  of  filial  love,  and  of  reverence 
for  a  divine  ideal  and  a  divine  reality,  whose  light  and  life 
are  the  true  light  and  life  of  men. 

According  to  this  beginning,  mainly,  Mill's  education 
went  forward  to  the  end.  In  his  eighth  year  he  begins  to 
learn  Latin,  and  at  the  same  time  to  assist  his  father  in 
the  instruction  of  the  younger  children  of  the  family  — 
a  work  which  he  was  compelled  to  continue  until  he 
reached  his  maturity;  the  whole  family  appear  to  have 
been  exclusively  home-taught.  At  the  same  time  he  reads, 
for  his  first  Greek  poetry,  the  Iliad.  Pope's  translation  of 
the  Iliad  he  declares  that  he  subsequently  read  through 
as  many  as  twenty  or  thirty  times.  But  it  is  unnecessary 
to  run  through  all  the  details  of  his  work  and  reading  in 
the  following  years.  The  materials  for  an  account  of  them 
may  be  found  in  his  autobiography,  and  still  more  in 
Prof.  Bain's  articles  (especially  Mind,  No.  XIV).  I  add 
only  that  as  early  as  his  seventh  year  he  made  his  debut 
in  authorship,  through  the  composition  of  a  brief  Eoman 
history,  founded  on  Hooke.  This  was  followed  up  by 
other  attempts  in  the  following  years,  some  of  them  in 
verse,  e.g.  one  book  in  continuation  of  Homer's  Iliad; 
some,  too,  in  the  form  of  tragedies.  It  is  worthy  of  notice 
that  his  father  required  of  him,  as  a  task,  the  writing  of 
English  verse,  after  he  had  once  begun  it  of  his  ojrn 


316  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

accord ;  and  this,  not  because  he  possessed,  or  his  philoso- 
phy allowed,  any  conception  of  poetry  as  a  spontaneous, 
irresistible,  organically  creative  inspiration,  but  because, 
looking  at  the  matter  with  purely  utilitarian  eyes,  the 
poetic  form  seemed  to  be  indeed  a  better  contrivance  than 
prose  for  expressing  some  things,  and  also  because  (in 
Mill's  words)  "people  in  general  attached  more  value  to 
verse  than  it  deserved,  and  the  power  of  writing  it  was, 
on  this  account,  worth  acquiring."  (Autobiography, 
p.  15.)  One  would  have  supposed  that  this  should  have 
been  a  sufficient  reason  for  seeking,  by  example  as  well  as 
precept,  to  bring  "people  in  general"  to  better  knowl- 
edge! It  cannot  occasion  surprise  that  James  Mill,  as 
(like  Bentham)  a  genuine  son  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  determined  adherent  of  an  utilitarian,  mechanical 
"  philosophy,"  agreed  with  Hume  and  Voltaire  in  depre- 
ciating the  prince  of  poets,  Shakespeare,  and  used,  as  we 
are  told,  severely  to  attack  the  English  idolatry  of  him. 
J.  S.  Mill  freely  admits  that  this  course  of  training  did 
not  make  him  a  poet  I  Mill  mentions  that  he  used  to 
sing  Dryden's  Alexander's  Feast,  and  some  of  Walter 
Scott's  songs,  "internally,"  to  music  of  his  own;  some  of 
the  airs  which  he  thus  composed  he  remembered  late  in 
his  life.  Music  remained,  to  the  end  of  Mill's  life,  his 
favorite  art. 

In  his  twelfth  year,  Mill's  father  began  with  him  a 
careful  coui-se  of  logical  training.  In  the  same  year,  as 
his  father's  History  of  India  was  going  througli  the  press, 
he  read  the  manuscript  aloud  while  his  father  corrected 
the  proofs.  This  practice  seems  to  have  contributed  ad- 
mirably toward  the  father's  purpose  of  "making"  his 
son's  mind  according  to  his  own  notions,  for  Stuart  Mill 


JOHN    STUART   MILL.  317 

vaunts  the  "number  of  new  ideas  which  [he]  received 
from  this  remarkable  book,  and  the  impulse  and  stimulus, 
as  well  as  guidance,  given  to  [his]  thoughts  by  its  criti- 
cisms and  disquisitions  on  society  and  civilization";  and 
he  was,  and  till  the  end  of  his  life  remained,  impressed 
with  it  as  "one  of  the  books  from  which  most  benefit 
may  be  derived  by  a  mind  in  the  course  of  making  up  its 
opinions''  In  the  next  year  he  was  taken  by  his  father 
"  through  a  complete  course  of  political  economy." 

I  pass  lightly  over  the  account  of  his  year's  residence 
ill  France,  in  the  family  of  Sir  Samuel  Bentham,  brother 
of  Jeremy  Bentham.  During  this  period  a  journal  of  his 
doings  was  kept  by  Mill  and  forwarded  to  his  father, 
along  with  disquisitions  on  all  sorts  of  grave  topics.  Por- 
tions of  this  journal  are  communicated  by  Prof.  Bain. 
The  evidence  of  work  done  is,  as  Bain  well  remarks, 
simply  stupendous.  The  boy  kept  almost  constantly  at 
his  books  from  long  before  breakfast  till  the  afternoon 
dinner,  and  then  again  in  the  evening.  To  this  were 
added  lessons  in  music  and  dancing.  At  Montpellier  he 
attended  courses  of  lectures  at  the  Faculte  des  Sciences,  on 
chemistry,  zoology,  and  logic  —  the  latter  by  M.  Gergonne, 
whom  Mill  terms  "  a  very  accomplished  representative  of 
the  eighteenth  century  metaphysics,"  substantially  his 
father's  and  his  own.  Of  the  distinguished  Frenchmen 
whom  he  met,  Laplace  is  mentioned,  and  M.  Say,  the 
political  economist,  at  whose  house  he  was  for  a  short 
time  entertained  as  a  guest,  and  where  he  met,  among 
others,  Saint-Simon,  Auguste  Comte's  master,  and  subse- 
quently notorious  on  account  of  his  socialistic  theories. 

In  Mill's  own  view,  the  greatest  advantage  which  he 
derived  from  his  residence  in  France  was  "  that  of  having 


318  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

breathedfor  a  whole  year  the  free  and  genial  atmosphere 
of  continental  life."  He  felt,  he  declares,  although  with- 
out stating  it  clearly  to  himself,  the  "  contrast  between 
the  frank  sociability  and  amiability  of  French  personal 
intercourse,  and  the  English  mode  of  existence  in  which 
everybody  acts  as  if  everybody  else  (with  few  or  no  excep- 
tions) was  either  an  enemy  or  a  bore."  He  professes  sub- 
sequently to  have  perceived  that  this  state  of  things, 
"  among  the  ordinary  English,"  arises  from  "  the  absence 
of  interest  in  things  of  an  unselfish  kind  .  .  .  reducing 
them,  considered  as  spiritual  beings,  to  a  kind  of  negative 
existence."  Are  we  to  see  in  this  a  reflection  on  the  cir- 
cumstances which  surrounded  Mill's  own  youth  ?  Was  it 
that  he  was  already  obscurely  conscious  of  the  disharmony 
between  the  purely  intellectual,  ungenial,  chilling,  me- 
chanical training  which  was  intended  to  render  him  the 
inheritor  and  continuator  of  others'  (namely,  his  father's 
and  Bentham's)  modes  of  thought,  and  a  possibility  of  his 
own  nature,  wliich  only  needed  the  quickening  warmth, 
the  educating  influence,  of  a  sympathetic  moral  atmos- 
phere to  cause  it  to  blossom  out  in  rich  forms  of  genuine 
life,  far  grander  than  anything  of  which  his  teachers 
practically  had,  or  admitted,  any  conception  ? 

For,  were  I  to  pause  here  and  state  beforehand  —  as 
the  occasion  tempts  me  to  do  —  the  conception  of  John 
Stuart  Mill,  which  I  have  derived  from  u  careful  study  of 
his  life  and  works,  I  should  say  that  he  was  utterly  inex- 
plicable, except  on  the  theory  of  such  a  disharmony  exist- 
ing as  matter  of  fact,  wliether  he  was  more,  or  less,  or 
not  at  all,  clearly  conscious  of  it  and  of  its  meaning.  The 
training  which  he  received,  I  may  premise,  was  thoroughly 
successful.    Of  the  correctness  of  the  "  views  "  held  by  his 


JOHN   STUART   MILL.  319 

father,  and  by  the  school  to  which  he  belonged,  he  was  per- 
fectly convinced.  Other,  clear,  theoretical  convictions 
he  had,  in  the  main,  none.  But  these  convictions,  though 
professedly  covering  exhaustively  the  whole  realm  of 
knowable  existence,  really  touched  only  the  merest  surface 
of  the  realm  of  truth  and  being.  So  far  as  they  any- 
way related  to  the  inner  substance  of  this  realm,  to  its  life, 
its  power,  its  vital  reality,  they  consisted  simply  in  nega- 
tions and  denials.  But  the  foundations  of  Mill's  nature 
—  as  of  every  man's  nature  —  were  laid  deeper  than  this. 
That  by  which  man  takes  hold  on — participates  in  — 
being,  lies  deeper  than  the  surface.  It  is  ideal  and  vital, 
not  only  phenomenal.  It  is  organic,  not  simply  atomic. 
It  is  power,  energy  of  intelligence  and  will  and  love,  and 
not  merely  blind  force  and  fate.  And  I  have  yet  to  be 
convinced  that  that  man  exists  —  for  real  existence  is 
nothing  but  incarnate  truth  —  who  does  not,  at  least  at 
some  epochs  in  his  life,  betray  by  sympathetic,  even  if  un- 
confessed,  vibrations  of  the  inmost,  truest  nature,  the 
harmony  in  which  that  nature  wjjuld  fain  place  itself 
with  essential  truth  and  essential  being.  Some  men 
succeed  more  completely  than  others  in  concealing  from 
themselves  and  the  world  the  practical,  visible,  or,  rather, 
to  change  the  figure,  audible  evidence  of  this  undertone, 
which  betokens  an  essential  nature,  upon  which  all  that 
is  termed  phenomenal  —  the  empirical  consciousness, 
"states  of  consciousness,"  "facts"  of  mental  coexistence 
and  sequence  —  is  but  a  superficial  incrustation,  and 
which  wholly  eludes  the  grasp,  or,  better,  overflows  the 
limits  of  those  mathematical  or  inductive  formulse  which 
express  the  utmost  attainable  results  of  phenomenal  sci- 
ence.   James  Mill  possessed  the  power  to  do  this  to  a  far 


320  BKITISH   THOUGHT   AND   THINKERS. 

greater  degree  than  his  son.  True,  the  latter  remained  to 
the  end,  in  profession  and  intention,  faithful  to  the  letter 
and  spirit  of  his  father's  method.  But  his  vital  experi- 
ence was  constantly  wresting  from  him  admissions,  the 
full  theoretical  significance  of  which  was  lost  for  him, 
through  his  persistent  attempt  to  make  them  appear  con- 
sistent with  the  method  in  question,  or,  that  failing,  to 
put  them  off  as  ultimate,  impenetrable,  though  indefeasible, 
facts,  incapable  of  being  comprehended  by  any  method.  In 
other  words,  the  man  Mill  was  infinitely  broader  than  his 
—  for  the  most  part  negative  —  philosophy.  And  when 
Prof.  Jevons  says,  with  truth,  that  "  there  is  hardly  one  of 
his  more  important  and  peculiar  doctrines  which  he  has 
not  himself  amply  refuted,"  I  interpret  this  as  due  to  the 
practical  conflict  in  Mill  between  a  narrow  philosophy, 
which  he  was  successfully  trained  to  wear  through  life,  as 
a  kind  of  intellectual  straight-jacket,  and  a  native  rich- 
ness and  grandeur  of  essential  humanity — i.e.  of  essen- 
tial iem^ —  which  could  be  hampered  and  distorted,  but 
not  suppressed.  Tiiis  conflict  always  appears  in  the  case 
of  natures,  not  essentially  frivolous  and  frothy,  whose  lines 
of  thought  and  intellectual  conviction,  being  essentially 
physical,  and  exterior,  are  utterly  incommensurate  with 
the  felt  depths  of  interior,  spiritual  being.  Spinoza  is  an 
illustrious  case  in  point.  It  is  the  ideal  nature  overflow- 
ing the  boundaries  vainly  set  for  it,  that  constitutes  the 
peculiar  moral  attractiveness  of  such  men  for  all  serious 
minds.  It  is  this  that,  in  spite  of  Mill's  provokingly 
hard-headed  obstinacy  in  bandaging  his  own  eyes  —  per- 
haps, rather,  in  consequence  of  it  —  contributes  an  ele- 
ment of  grave,  quiet,  sadness  to  the  impression  derived 
from  the  contemplation  of  his  character,  wliich  to  noble 


JOHN^   STUART  MILL.  321 

minds  is  really  touching  and  winning.  In  support  of  this 
general  judgment  upon  Mill,  I  shall  presently  adduce  par- 
ticular proofs.  But  first,  I  shall  recall,  in  brief  summary, 
the  remaining  incidents  of  his  life. 

Eeturning  from  France  in  the  middle  of  1821,  the  re- 
mainder of  the  year  and  the  larger  portion  of  the  follow- 
ing one  were  given  to  psychological  studies.  Condillac, 
Locke,  Helvetius,  Hartley,  Berkeley,  Hume,  Eeid,  Dugald 
Stewart,  Brown  on  Cause  and  Effect  (it  is  in  this  order 
that  they  are  mentioned  by  Mill),  were  the  authors 
studied.  It  is  expressly  mentioned,  that  of  Locke  and 
Helvetius  his  father  required  him  to  make  abstracts, 
accompanied  by  comments  of  his  own,  which  were  after- 
Avard  read  by  or  to  his  father,  and  thoroughly  discussed. 
At  the  same  time  he  made  a  beginning  of  reading  law 
with  John  Austin,  in  connection  with  which  his  father 
put  into  his  hands  Dumont's  redaction  of  Beutham's 
Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation.  His  previous  edu- 
cation, he  admits,  "had  been,  in  a  certain  sense,  already  a 
course  of  Benthamism."  But  the  reading  of  this  book 
was  like  a  new  and  original  revelation  of  what  he  had 
already  been  told.  It  was,  he  says,  one  of  the  turning- 
points  in  his  mental  history.  It  made  him  "a  different 
being."  The  principle  of  utility,  of  which  the  book  was  an 
extended  application,  took  such  hold  of  him  that,  through 
its  influence,  he  who  had  been  "brought  up  from  the  first 
without  any  religious  belief,"  now  had  (says  he)  "in  one 
of  the  best  senses  of  the  term,  a  religion."  It  lighted 
up  his  life,  and  gave  a  definite  shape  to  his  aspirations. 

Here  again,  then,  we  find  Mill  giving  visible  evidence 
of  a  nature  which  demanded  the  food  —  craved  the  edu- 
cation and  encoura<rement  —  which  his  teacher  did  not 


322  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

give.  There  was  the  felt  want  of  a  religion  of  some  kind, 
and  Mill,  throwing  himself  with  an  unusually  noble  ardor 
into  the  flrst  thing  that  seemed  able  to  supply  the  defi- 
ciency—  into  a  system  which,  he  then  thought,  opened  up 
an  indefinite  "vista  of  improvement"  for  the  human  race, 
and  for  the  practical  realization  of  which  he  could  labor 
with  all  his  heart —  thought  that  he  had  at  last  a  religion, 
but  only  to  be  quickly  undeceived.  At  the  same  time  the 
reading  of  another  work,  founded  on  Bentham's  manu- 
scripts, and  entitled  "Analysis  of  the  Influence  of  Natural 
Religion  on  the  Temporal  Happiness  of  Mankind,"  con- 
vinced him  of  the  impossibility  (revelation  being  of  course 
out  of  the  question)  that  an  intelligent  being  (naturally 
in  the  Beuthamic  sense  of  this  expression)  should  hold 
any  other  than  such  a  quasi-religion  as  he  had  adopted. 
Burning  as  with  the  ardor  of  a  young  convert,  he  founded 
a  utilitarian  society,  composed  of  a  few  members,  among 
whom  he  was  the  leading  spirit,  and  who  held  their  meet- 
ings in  Bentham's  house.  This  society  continued  in 
existence  for  two  or  three  years.  In  the  year  1824,  only 
eighteen  years  of  age,  he  wrote  three  articles  for  the 
newly  founded  organ  of  liberalism,  the  Westminster 
Review.  From  this  time  on,  throughout  his  life,  he  con- 
tinued a  prolific  contributor  to  newspapers  and  other 
periodicals.  In  the  next  year,  1825,  he  was  largely  occu- 
pied with  editing  Bentham's  treatise  on  evidence,  learnt 
German,  and  founded  a  speculative  debating  society,  which 
met  at  the  house  of  Mr.  Grote,  the  historian.  The  meet- 
ings of  this  society  were  continued  three  or  four  years, 
during  which  such  works  as  his  father's  Political  Economy 
and  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind, 
and  also  logical  topics,  were  taken  up. 


JOHJSr    STUART   MILL.  323 

In  1826,  at  the  age  of  twenty  years,  occurred  that  re- 
markable crisis  in  his  mental  history,  the  account  of 
which  constitutes  the  most  suggestive  chapter  in  his 
autobiography.  It  was,  after  all  allowance  has  been  made 
for  the  depressing  influence  of  nerves  overstrained  by 
constant  intellectual  training,  simply  a  fresh  bursting 
by  his  own  spirit  of  the  bonds  which  had  been  laid  upon 
it.  From  Bentham  he  had  learnt  that  the  greatest  sen- 
sible, or  immediate,  happiness  of  the  greatest  number 
of  individuals  was  the  true  end  of  life  and  labor,  and 
to  this  he  had  ardently  assented.  He  now  realized  that, 
if  this  end  were  attained,  he,  for  one,  should  still  be 
unsatisfied.  He  accordingly  sunk  into  a  state  of  dejec- 
tion, which  only  ended  when,  at  the  expiration  of  a  pro- 
tracted period  of  mental  distress  and  self-questioning, 
he  perceived  that,  however  true  the  happiness-doctrine 
might  be  in  theory,  it  would  not  hold  in  individual  prac- 
tice. While,  with  that  peculiar  doggedness  of  intellect 
which  would  not  permit  him  to  deny  the  theoretical 
convictions  in  which  he  had  been  drilled,  he  still  con- 
tinued, and  that  to  the  end  of  his  life,  to  maintain  that 
"  happiness  is  the  test  of  all  rules  of  conduct  and  the 
end  of  life,"  he  perceived  that  it  was  to  be  attained  only 
by  treating  it  as  if  it  were  not  the  end.  It  was  only  to 
be  secured  as  an  incident  to  the  prosecution  of  some  other 
"ideal  end."  "Aiming  thus  at  something  else,  [men]  find 
happiness  by  the  way."  This  is  precisely  the  doctrine  of  the 
moralists  whom  Mill,  as  an  abstract  reasoner,  professedly 
opposed,  from  Plato  and  Aristotle  down  to  the  present 
day.  Ic  were  easy  to  indicate  the  source  and  the  precise 
nature  of  Mill's  confusion.  I  content  myself  now  with 
pointing  out  this  new  instance  of  the  fact  that  Mill's 


324  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

vital  practical  experience  carried  him  far  beyond  the 
terms  of  the  theory  which  he  had  learned,  and  to  which 
he  clung;  nay,  more,  into  admissions  in  flat  contradic- 
tion with  it.  It  was  only  because  the  presuppositions 
of  his  theory  allowed  no  place  for  the  larger  truth  wiiich 
he  felt,  and  on  which  he  proceeded  in  no  small  measure 
to  act,  and  because  he  would  not  revise  those  presup- 
positions so  as  to  make  them  square  with  facts  of  vital 
experience,  that  he  was  obliged  in  theorizing  either  to 
ignore  these  facts,  or  else,  at  a  loss  of  consistency,  which 
no  words  avail  to  conceal,  to  gloss  them  over  and  seek 
to  make  them  appear  as  an  obvious  corollary  from  prem- 
ises in  which  these  very  facts  were  denied  beforehand. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  it  was  precisely  from  Words- 
worth, the  poet-philosopher  of  mind  directly  opposite 
to  that  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up,  that  in  the 
next-following  years  Mill  derived  greatest  comfort  and 
spiritual  furtherance,  and  that  through  personal  inter- 
course with  men  so  far  removed  in  spirit  from  his  earlier 
utilitarian  associates  as  John  Sterling,  Frederick  Maurice, 
and  Carlyle,  he  received  further  spiritual  invigoration. 
Those  who  have  assented  to  the  views  set  forth  in  the 
beginning  of  the  fourth  chapter  of  this  volume  (on  Shake- 
speare) will  not  think  it  strange  that  Mill,  possessing 
some  of  that  which  may  be  called  tiie  vital  })hilosophic 
susceptibility,  should  have  found  it  ministered  to  by 
the  poet,  the  seer,  and  the  divine.  Yet  all  this,  of 
so  great  practical  significance  to  him,  he  souglit  to  put 
off  or  conceal  under  such  phrases  as  "  culture  of  the 
feelings,"  "internal  culture,"  " the  reaction  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  against  the  eighteentii,*' — interesting 
phenomena,  indeed,  which   it  were   highly   unjust  and 


JOHN   STUART    MILL.  325 

uncanclid  to  ignore,  but  which  have  no  deeper  ascertain- 
able ontological  significance  than  mere  matter-of-fact 
associated  sensations,  or  "  states  of  consciousness,"  which 
are  the  atomic  ultimates  of  the  whole  experiential  and 
sceptical  philosophy. 

In  the  year  1836  Mill  was  obliged,  on  account  of  an 
illness  in  the  head,  to  ask  for  three  months'  leave  of 
absence  from  the  place  in  the  India  House,  where  his 
father,  who  died  in  this  year,  had  served  since  1819  or 
1820,  and  he  himself  since  1823.  Three  years  later  he 
was  obliged  to  absent  himself  still  longer.  Nothing  but 
his  excellent  physical  constitution  had  made  him  hold 
out  so  long  under  the  constant  mental  strain,  without 
vacations,  to  which  since  his  infancy  he  had  been,  first 
perforce,  and  then  voluntarily,  subjected.  In  the  same 
year  his  brother  Henry  died  from  just  such  an  overstrain. 

In  1843  was  published  his  system  of  logic,  which  had 
been  on  the  stocks  for  several  years.  The  unusual  at- 
tention which  it  attracted,  and  the  marked  influence 
exerted  by  it  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  have  now  be- 
come a  matter  of  history.  Mill's  object  was  to  counter- 
work the  theory  that  there  is  in  the  human  mind  any 
source  of  certitude,  or  any  universality  or  necessity  in- 
herent a  priori  in  the  forms  of  knowledge,  independently 
of  individual  "experience."  (One  of  Mill's  abundant  con- 
tradictions is  the  profession  of  this  purpose,  and  the 
disavowal,  almost  in  the  same  breath,  of  any  intention 
to  prejudice  the  decision  of  metaphysical  questions!) 
But  the  observant  student  notices  that  in  the  most  im- 
portant portions  of  his  discussion  he  is  ever  and  anon 
introducing,  with  a  naive  innoccncy  of  bearing,  at  once 
refreshing  and  irritating,  under  the  names  of  "  belief," 


326  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

"  persuasion,"  "  natural  prompting,"  and  the  like,  the 
very  a  priori,  universal,  organic,  rational,  and  recreative 
element,  which  he  would  exclude,  and  which  he  then  seeks 
to  make  it  appear  that  he  luis  deduced,  either  strictly, 
or,  in  his  phrase  —  a  strange  phrase  for  a  logician  to 
employ — "as  far  as  any  human  purpose  requires,"  from 
pure  observation  and  "objective,"  physico-psychological 
"experience."  If  it  were  possible  to  have  a  double  logic, 
of  which  one  part,  under  the  name  of  phenomenal  logic, 
and  appropriated  to  the  scientific  treatment  of  phenomena 
(sensible  appearances)  as  objects  of  knowledge,  could  be 
wholly  severed  from  the  other,  which  should  be  culled 
real  logic,  and  should  formulate  the  methods  of  real, 
substantive,  or  philosophical  knowledge,  we  might  say 
that  Mill's  work  was  an  attempt  to  supi)ly  the  former; 
but  an  attempt  fatally  unsuccessful,  if  judged  by  the  puz- 
zlingly  uncertain  statement  of  its  data,  and  the  abundant 
non-sequiturs  found  in  all  its  polemical  part.  Through 
repeated  and  extended  references  in  his  logic  Mill  did 
much  to  call  the  attention  of  Englishmen  to  Auguste 
Comte,  the  founder  of  the  French  school  of  Positivists. 

In  1848  followed  the  work  on  Political  Economy. 

In  the  year  1851  occurred  Mill's  marriage  to  Mrs. 
Taylor,  the  "almost  infallible  counsellor,"  whose  friend- 
ship and  assistance  he  had  previously  enjoyed  for  many 
years,  and  whose  memory,  after  their  brief  married  life 
of  seven  and  a  half  years,  had  been  terminated  by  her 
death,  remained  to  him  a  "religion."  More  remarkable 
and  touching  devotion  to  the  memory  of  a  woman  has 
rarely  been  shown  than  that  paid  by  Mill  to  the  memory 
of  his  wife,  in  his  Autobiography,  and  in  the  introductory 
page  of    his  (or,  as   he    says,   their  joint)   work,   "  On 


JOHN    STUART   MILL.  327 

Liberty."  It  is  not  only  in  most  marked  contrast  with 
his  father's  unchivalrous,  not  to  say  brutally  unkind,  treat- 
ment of  his  own  wife  (J.  S.  Mill,  too,  has  nothing  to  say, 
in  his  Autobiography,  of  his  mother),  but  is  also  another 
passionate  manifestation  of  that  potentiality  of  essential 
human  life  which  was  wholly  ignored  in  his  training. 

I  scarcely  need  to  mention  his  other  works,  his  Rep- 
resentative Government,  Subjection  of  Women,  Exam- 
ination of  the  Philosophy  of  Sir  William  Hamilton, 
Utilitarianism  (contained  in  his  Dissertations  and  Dis- 
cussions), or  the  honorable  circumstances  of  his  entrance 
into  parliament,  to  procure  which  he  manfully  refused 
to  conciliate  voters  by  the  utterance  of  the  half  truths 
or  downright  falsehoods  of  the  demagogue,  or  make  any 
direct  or  indirect  use  of  pecuniary  "arguments,"  or  his 
creditable,  though  brief,  career  in  parliament.  A  large 
part  of  every  year  after  his  wife's  death,  or  as  much  as 
was  practicable,  he  passed  near,  her  grave  in  the  south 
of  France,  in  "communion  with  her  memory."  There 
his  death  ensued  on  the  8th  of  May,  1873. 

To  recapitulate,  now,  what  has  already  been  fore- 
shadowed, or  perhaps,  even,  with  sufficient  distinctness 
stated,  respecting  Mill's  philosophical  and  human  atti- 
tude and  quality,  and  to  furnish  the  "particular  proofs" 
promised,  a  short  space  may  suffice.  I  have  said,  virtually, 
that  Mill  possessed  a  considerable  degree  of  heat,  with 
little  or  no  light.  By  virtue  of  his  very  existence  he 
participated  through  the  roots  of  his  being  in  the  uni- 
versal being,  which  all  truly  positive  philosophy  (it  is 
a  curious  illustration  of  the  topsyturviness  of  ideas  in 
certain  quarters,  including  those  frequented  by  Mill,  that 
what  is   now-a-days  popularly  known   as  "  the  Positive 


328  BRITISH   THOUGHT  AND   THINKERS. 

Philosophy"  is  a  body  of  doctrines  wliich,  on  their 
philosophical  side,  are  wholly  negative)  declares,  and  ever 
has  declared,  as  it  ever  must,  to  be  life  and  action, 
power,  spirit,  and  the  power  of  this  participation  wrought 
in  him  as  a  sort  of  dim  instinct,  a  hidden  flame,  ever  and 
anon  bursting  the  shell  of  negations  in  which  it  was 
enveloped,  disturbing  and  confusing  the  computations 
in  which  it  was  an  unacknowledged  factor ;  but,  for 
the  rest,  ignored,  or  explained  away  as  only  a  (sub- 
stanceless)  plienomenon  like  any  other,  or,  if  it  forced 
more  explicit  recognition,  put,  in  a  highly  unphilo- 
sophical  manner,  into  the  basket  reserved  for  nuts  too 
hard  to  crack,  and  to  which,  therefore,  it  were  frivolous 
and  useless  to  pay  further  attention.  This  was  the  heat- 
element,  which  bore  more  fruit,  as  may,  from  the  fore- 
going, well  be  imagined,  in  Mill's  life  than  in  his  doctrine. 
Of  the  light-element,  in  the  sense  of  speadative  insight, 
few  persons  to  whom  the  term  philosopher  has  been 
popularly  applied  ever  possessed  less  of  it  than  Mill.  It 
was  a  fundamental  tenet  of  the  philosophy  which  he 
inherited  and  adopted,  that  such  insight  was  impossible, 
and  the  very  notion  of  it  preposterous.  Almost  the  whole 
of  that  which  in  Great  Britain  had  for  two  hundred  years 
passed  for  philosophy,  had  consisted,  essentially,  in  a 
laborious  attempt  to  prove  the  non-existence,  or  non- 
attainability,  of  the  very  conditions  of  philosophy.  The 
effect  of  this  upon  the  English  mind  Mill  recognized  and 
deplored ;  its  cause  wholly  escaped  him.  With  a  touch, 
let  us  hope,  of  exaggeration,  he  complained  of  the  ab- 
sence among  the  English  youth  of  his  time  "  of  the  ardor 
of  research,  the  eagerness  for  large  and  comprehensive 
inquiry,   [characteristic]    of   the  educated   part  of   the 


JOHK   STUART   MILL.  329 

French  and  German  youth.  .  .  .  Out  of  the  narrow 
bounds  of  mathematical  and  physical  science"  he  pro- 
fessed to  find  "  not  a  vestige  of  a  reading  and  thinking 
public  engaged  in  the  investigation  of  truth  as  truth, 
in  the  prosecution  of  thought  for  the  sake  of  thought." 
Here  it  is  the  "  heat "  in  Mill  that  speaks.  But  with  a 
provoking  deficiency  of  philosophical  light  {insight, 
Jcnowledge,)  he  proceeded  to  do  all  in  his  power  to  culti- 
vate further  those  intellectual  conditions  from  which 
the  intellectual  apathy,  of  which  he  complained,  had  in 
the  largest  measure  sprung.  For  of  what  did  he  com- 
plain ?  Of  the  confinement  of  intellectual  interest 
within  "  the  narrow  bounds  of  mathematical  and  physical 
science."  But  the  whole  stress  of  English  philosophy, 
taking  its  cue  from  Bacon,  had  been  laid  on  the  pre- 
tended proof  (in  reality  only  the  dogmatic  assertion) 
that  outside  of  the  boundaries  of  mathematical  and 
physical  science,  and  apart  from  the  method  employed 
and  the  presuppositions  adopted  in  such  science,  nothing 
further  was  to  be  known,  except  the  "negative  truth" 
(in  Mill's  phrase)  that  further  knowledge  was  impossible. 
This  tendency  reached  its  extreme  logical  outcome  in 
David  Hume  and  James  Mill,  J.  S.  Mill's  particular 
guiding-stars.  All  that  which,  according  to  them,  can 
be  known,  whether  of  nature  or  mind,  is  reduced  to  the 
merest  surface-facts  of  consciousness,  pure  mental  phe- 
nomena, "  impressions,"  "  feelings,"  opaque  facts  of  mental 
experience,  superficially  visible,  numerically  distinguish- 
able, but  otherwise  incomprehensible  and  inexplicable. 
Mill's  logic  is  intended  as  one  long  and  elaborate  (though 
partly  indirect)  enforcement  of  this  view.  Being  and 
power,  the  two  fundamental  conceptions  of  philosophy, 
14* 


330  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

the  polar  stars  of  speculative  insight,  are  summarily  put 
out  of  court,  or,  if  admitted  in  name,  it  is  only  as  a  pro- 
fessedly necessary  accommodation  to  popular  phraseology 
and,  for  the  rest,  as  mere  names  for  our  ignorance,  i.e. 
for  nothing.  Being  and  power  are,  indeed,  not  physical 
conceptions.  They  lie  behind  and  explain  the  physical 
realm  of  knowledge,  but  are  not  contained  in  it  as  such. 
The  attempt  to  realize  them  as  physical  conceptions,  or 
to  discover  them  by  physical  methods  of  sensible  obser- 
vation and  experiment,  necessarily  fails.  Hence  they  are, 
by  the  school  which  — with  what  would  have  to  be  termed 
unparalleled  effrontery,  did  it  not  proceed  from  pure 
blindness  —  terms  itself  "experiential,"  declared  non 
avenus.  Causation,  the  law  and  substantive  manifesta- 
tion of  power,  is  reduced  to  matter-of-fact  succession  and 
nothing  else,  and  being,  to  less  than  its  own  shadow, 
namely,  only  to  a  "permanent  possibility"  (whatever 
that  may  mean)  of  its  shadow,. projected  in  the  form 
of  feeling.  Mill  complains,  further,  of  the  lack  of  a  dis- 
position to  investigate  "  truth  as  truth,"  or  to  prosecute 
"thought  for  the  sake  of  thought,"  But  the  pillars  of 
"truth  as  truth"  are  universal  and  commanding,  and 
the  "prosecution  of  thought  for  the  sake  of  thought" 
presupposes  that  there  is  something  to  be  prosecuted 
under  the  name  of  "thought,"  and  a  power  or  faculty 
with  which  to  prosecute  it.  But  Mill's  philosophy — which 
is  nothing  but  empirical  psychology,  arbitrarily  universal- 
ized and  put,  to  its  own  injury,  in  the  place  of  philoso- 
phy—  has  no  eye  for  such  truth.  It  expressly  denies 
its  attainability,  or  that  there  is  evidence  of  its  exist- 
ence. All  knowledge  is  made  intensely  subjective,  in- 
dividual, being  confined  to  particular  states  of  conscious- 


JOHN  STUART  MILL.  331 

ness,  and  to  the  actually  observed,  but,  by  express 
"declaration,  not  necessary,  and  otherwise  unfathomable, 
'order  which  exists  among  them.  Accordingly,  also,  no 
provision  is  made  for  thought,  as  something  which,  if 
it,  and  an  organ  appropriate  to  it,  exist,  is  necessarily 
something  other  than  mere  atomic  or  complex  states  of 
consciousness.  No  provision  is  made  for  the  recogni- 
tion of  any  mental  activity  whatsoever,  and,  such  activity 
being  nevertheless  presupposed,  nothing  is  left  for  it  to 
do  but  to  stare  at  and  analyze  its  own  "  states."  We  must 
say  that  Mill  had  a  dull  sense  of  the  proper  ideal  of 
philosophy,  but  that  the  method  and  presuppositions  which 
training  had  caused  to  be  to  him  as  a  second  nature,  led 
him  at  every  step  by  which  he  sought  to  approach  it, 
not  toward,  but  away  from  it. 

The  predecessors  of  Mill  —  Hume  and  James  Mill  — 
with  a  systematic  consistency  which  necessitated  a  sub- 
limely reckless  disregard  of,  or  appearance  of  blindness  to, 
the  fundamental  facts  of  vital,  intellectual  experience,  had 
reduced  everything,  without  exception,  of  which  man  has 
a  conception,  to  associated  sensations.  Memory,  expecta- 
tion, belief,  personal  identity,  mind, — and  matter  as  well, — 
all  were  identical  with  sensations,  not  functions  or  entities 
apart.  That  J.  S.  Mill  should  have  perceived  and  frankly 
admitted  that  they  were  in  error,  does  not  prove  that  he 
was  possessed  of  any  specially  profound  philosophical  in- 
siglit;  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  how,  having  any  insight  at 
all  and  any  honesty  in  relating  what  he  perceived,  he  should 
have  done  otherwise:  but  it  does  prove  that  he  had  forced 
upon  him  some  consciousness  of  a  number  of  the  ele- 
ments or  data  of  philosophical  speculation,  of  which  in- 
deed he  confessed  his  inability  to  make  any  constructive 


332  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

use,  but  to  which  he  would  not,  therefore,  absolutely  shut 
his  eyes.  For  him  they  are  "ultimate  facts,"  inexplicable 
by  any  theory,  because  not  explicable  by  the  theory  or 
method  which  he  had  been  taught  and  which  he  obsti- 
nately continued  to  consider  as  the  only  one  appropriate 
to  "  philosophical "  inquiries.  Of  these  ultimate  facts 
recognized  by  Mill,  the  fundamental  one,  on  which  all  the 
otiiers  depend,  is  personal  identity  —  self.  In  accordance 
with  the  letter  and  spirit  of  his  inherited  method,  he  de- 
fines Mind  (that  to  which  selfhood,  or  personal  identity, 
should  pertain,  or,  rather,  of  which  it  is  the  substantive 
essence)  abstractly  as  a  "permanent  possibility  of  feeling," 
and  concretely  as  a  "series  of  feelings."  But,  he  adds, 
this  series  of  feelings  is  "  conscious  of  itself  as  past  and 
future."  How  this  can  be,  Mill  naturally  finds  incompre- 
hensible, for  it  is  absurd.  It  seems  to  point  to  a  true 
"  Mind,  or  Ego,"  as  "  something  difierent  from  any  series 
of  feelings."  In  his  Examination  of  the  Philosophy  of 
Sir  William  Hamilton,  Mill  is  content  to  leave  the  matter 
as  a  "final  inexplicability,"  an  "ultimate"  or  "inexpli- 
cable fact,"  of  such  nature  that  when  "  mind  "  is  defined  as 
above  (as  a  "series  of  feelings  conscious  of  itself,"  etc.),  it 
must  be  understood  that  the  terms  are  used  "  with  a  reser- 
Tation  as  to  their  meaning."  This  last  phrase  has  a  curi- 
ous and  dubious  sound,  coming  from  a  reputed  metaphy- 
sician and  logician.  A  definition  with  a  "  reservation." 
And  how  much  of  a  reservation  ?  This  much,  namely, 
that  the  definition  is  to  be  regarded  as  no  definition  ;  that 
it  omits,  or  describes  in  terms  which  confessedly  reduce 
to  the  absurd,  the  nominal  subject  of  the  definition  ;  that 
it  is  a  description  of  appearances,  as  they  present  them- 
selves to  the  empirical  psychologist,  abstracting  from  the 


JOHN   STUART   MILL.  338 

noume7ion,  or  essential  reality,  by  reference  to  which  alone 
they  are  explicable.  The  world  did  not  have  to  wait  till 
Mill's  day  to  discover  that  in  appearances  as  such  there  is 
contradiction.  Plato  knew  it,  and  perceived  that  there- 
fore it  was  only  in  a  secondary  sense  that  they  could  be 
said  to  be  the  subject  of  knowledge  ;  it  was  the  character- 
istic of  essential  or  philosophical  knowledge  that  it  pen- 
etrated beneath  appearances  and  was  satisfied  with  noth- 
ing less  than  being.  -But  the  whole  wisdom  of  sensational 
psychology,  vainly  attempting  to  supplant  and  appropri- 
ate the  name  of  philosophy,  ends  where  Plato's  began. 
Superficial  description  takes  the  place  of  essential  defini- 
tion, surface-sight  of  insight.  I  hasten  to  add,  that  in 
his  notes  to  the  second  edition  of  his  father's  Analysis  of 
the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind,  the  assumption  of 
a  "  Mind,  or  Ego,  different  from  any  series  of  feelings," 
no  longer  appears  to  be  regarded  by  Stuart  Mill  merely  as 
a  conceivable  or  possibly  necessary  one,  but  as  really  neces- 
sary, and  such  mind  is  there  described  as  that  "  impene- 
trable," "inner  covering,"  that  "inexplicable  tie"  or 
"  bond  of  some  sort,"  whicli,  "  to  me,  constitutes  my  Ego." 
This  is  equivalent  to  a  complete  confession,  on  the  part  of 
Mill,  of  the  radical  inability  of  the  "experiential  psychol- 
ogy" (arbitrarily  so-called)  to  meet  the  requirements  of  a 
philosophy  of  mind,  or  of  a  philosophy  of  matter;  for 
Mill's  account  of  matter  depends  directly  (notwithstand- 
ing his  apparent  unconsciousness  of  the  fact)  on  his  ac- 
count of  mind  (see,  on  this  latter  point,  the  capital  book 
by  W.  L.  Courtney,  The  Metaphysics  of  J.  S.  Mill,  Lon- 
don, 1879,  p.  69) ;  in  other  words,  this  psychology  leads 
to  no  philosophical  results  at  all.  But  we  have  here  an- 
other illustration  —  and  a  fundamental  one,  since  it  lies 


334  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

at  the  very  root  of  Mill's  doctrine,  and  indeed  of  all  phi- 
losophy—  of  the  truth  of  my  main  thesis,  namely,  of  the 
disparateness  between  Mill's  inherited  theory  and  method 
and  the  depths  (to  him,  it  is  true,  utterly  obscure)  of  his 
vital  experience. 

Further  illustrations  of  this  conflict  between  the  purest, 
most  resolute  externalism,  and  consequent  superficiality, 
in  theory,  and  an  internal,  though  ever  confused  conscious- 
ness, or  better  practical  knowledge,  which  tended  to  over- 
shoot the  theory  on  all  sides,  are  not  wanting,  though, 
perhaps,  not  now  needed.  I  will  simply  allude  to  Mill's 
doctrine  of  the  will.  The  will  he  declares  to  be  "  wholly  a 
phenomenon."  This,  for  him,  is  the  same  as  to  say  that 
it  is  not  a  power.  It,  and  the  actions  said  to  result  from 
it,  follow  the  same  laws  of  so-called  physical  causation,  or 
"invariable  sequence,"  with  all  other  natural  phenomena. 
This  is  the  doctrine  of  necessity,  as  it  is  usually  termed, 
in  fancied  opposition  to  the  doctrine  of  the  freedom  of 
the  human  will.  But  the  word  necessity,  and  the  doctrine 
called  by  that  name,  produced  in  Mill  a  feeling  of  unen- 
durable oppression  and  dejection.  It  seemed  synonymous 
with  fatalism,  and  his  own  vital  experience  told  him  that 
it  must  be  false.  He  recalled  the  fact  that,  according  to 
the  empirical  doctrine  of  causation  supported  by  him  and 
his  predecessors,  there  is  no  necessary  connection  between 
cause  and  effect,  but  only  matter-of-fact  sequence.  Hence 
he  declared  triumphantly  that  the  phrase  "doctrine  of 
necessity"  was  misleading,  i.e.  expressed  a  falsehood,  and 
he  proceeded  in  effect,  and  even  in  terms,  to  maintain  a 
very  rational  doctrine  of  freedom,  while  professing  only  to 
uphold  a  corrected  doctrine  of  necessity,  and  not  freedom. 
(For  that  matter,  he  need  not  have  feared  to  call  it  a  doc- 


JOHN   STUART   MILL.  335 

trine  of  freedom,  for  the  only  intelligent  defenders  of 
freedom  perceive  that  between  necessity  and  freedom, 
properly  understood,  there  is  not  opposition,  but  intimate 
alliance,  the  true  necessity  being  not  the  enemy  but  the 
instrument,  and  even  the  essence,  of  the  true  freedom.) 
But,  in  this  matter.  Mill's  moral  nature  carries  him  far 
away  from  the  terms  of  his  theory,  and  renders  his  expo- 
sition extremely  contradictory  and  confused,  causing  him 
constantly  to  posit  will  as  virtually  far  more  than  a  pow- 
erless, mechanical  phenomenon,  moved  only  by  impulsion, 
and  to  make  of  it  a  rational,  and,  in  its  measure,  self- 
directing  power. 

The  like  could  be  shown  concerning  Mill's  practical 
attitude  with  reference  to  other  fundamental  doctrines  of 
ethical  philosophy,  where,  while  adhering  as  closely  as  pos- 
sible to  the  terms  of  the  theory  of  the  natural,  mechanical 
man,  he  discloses  a  powerful,  though  confused  and  fet- 
tered, sense  of  the  spiritual  man  and  its  law  of  love  and 
liberty,  as  the  true  ideal  and  end.  Here  he  is  deceived  by 
his  doctrine  of  inseparable  association.  Happiness  beiug, 
by  general  admission,  inseparably  associated  in  idea  with 
the  realization  by  man  of  his  true  humanity, —  i.e.  with 
the  attainment  by  him  of  his  true  end, —  Mill  confounds 
happiness,  the  passive  state,  with  this  end,  which  is  essen- 
tially a  condition  of  active  being.  But  we  have  already 
seen  that  Mill  early  found  that  his  theory  (founded  on 
such  a  confusion)  would  not  hold  good  in  practice. 

Finally,  a  mournful  instance  of  the  moral  hurt  done 
to  Mill  by  his  thoroughly  externalistic  philosophy,  in  sep- 
arating him  from  a  clear  and  happy  recognition  of  a  pro- 
found ethical  idealism  to  which  his  inmost  nature  was 
inclined,  is  furnished  in  the  first  of  the  posthumous  essays 


336  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

on  Religion,  the  essay  on  Nature.  Here,  looking  at 
nature  wholly  from  the  outside,  he  finds  it  replete  with 
horror  and  cruelty,  an  incarnate  demon.  What  good,  he 
concludes,  nature  brings  to  human  beings,  "is  mostly  the 
result  of  their  own  exertions."  Precisely.  Here  only  a 
narrow  boundary  separates  Mill  from  the  profound  doc- 
trine of  that  noblest  of  modern  ethical  philosophers,  the 
elder  Fichte,  for  whom  the  world  ("  nature  ")  was  simply 
the  "  material  of  duty,"  the  necessary  foil  and  instrument 
of  human,  i.e.  moral,  endeavor,  the  condition  of  the  suc- 
cess of  such  endeavor,  viewed  apart  from  which,  and  from 
its  laws,  it  was,  in  a  radical  sense,  viewed  in  a  false  light 
and  must  appear  full  of  absurdity  and  darkness. 

It  will  have  been  observed  that,  in  the  progress  of  this 
discussion,  I  have  looked  aside,  in  the  main,  from  Mill's 
part  in  discussions  and  agitations,  which  are  compara- 
tively independent  of  philosophical  speculation,  and  this, 
both  because  my  plan  required  this  course,  and  because 
Mill,  in  these  other  relations,  has  been  sufficiently  appre- 
ciated by  others. 

I  conclude  that  J.  S.  Mill's  greatest  personal  misfor- 
tune was  that  he  was  born  the  son  of  James  Mill,  and  not 
of  Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte.  He  presents  the  appearance 
of  a  noble  nature  confined  in  intellectual  fetters,  which, 
forged  for  him,  he  himself  did  his  best  to  rivet  upon  him- 
self, without  wholly  succeeding.  He  attracts  a  sympathy 
at  once  regretful  and  affectionate.  Perhaps  his  specula- 
tive failures,  engraved  already  so  conspicuously  upon  the 
tablets  of  the  intellectual  history  of  his  race,  may  con- 
tribute more  for  the  world's  final  instruction  than  the 
mconspicuous  successes  of  many  another  less  renowned. 


CHAPTER  XIT. 

HERBERT  SPENCER. 

Herbert  Spencer  is  the  leading  living  representative 
of  that  type  of  thought  which  we  have  found  prevailing 
in  British  climes  all  along  from  Bacon  to  Mill.  The 
sceptre  so  long  and  effectively  wielded  by  Mill  was  trans- 
ferred, without  difficulty,  into  the  hands  of  Mr.  Spencer. 
As  in  the  death  of  the  former,  one  of  his  admirers,  with 
pardonable  enthusiasm  of  affection,  but  unpardonable  in- 
sularity of  view,  deplored  the  loss  of  "not  only  the  great 
philosopher,  but  also  the  great  prophet,  of  our  time,"  so 
Mr.  Spencer,  living,  is  to  his  followers  (in  the  language 
employed  by  one  of  them)  "  the  greatest  of  living  philoso- 
phers,"' and  the  undoubted  prophet  of  a  new  dispensation. 
Is  the  dispensation  indeed  a  new  one,  or  only  a  continua- 
tion of  the  old  ?  What,  too,  are  the  prophet's  credentials, 
and  of  what  worth  are  they  ?  These  are  the  points  which 
we  must  presently  consider. 

When  Herbert  Spencer's  biography  shall  be  written, 
the  world  may  surely  expect  to  find  in  it  a  story  of  pecu- 
liar interest.  As  yet,  naturally,  only  a  meagre  outline  of 
the  facts  on  which  it  would  be  founded  has  been  given 
to  the  world.  Mr.  Spencer  was  born  in  Derby,  April  27, 
1820.  His  father  and  grandfather  were  teachers.  Owing 
to  his  imperfect  health,  his  early  education  was  superin- 
tended at  home  by  his  father.  Much  of  the  time  he  was 
left  free  to  amuse  and  instruct  himself  in  his  own  way. 

15  337 


338  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

Under  these  circumstances  he  developed  a  marked  fond- 
ness for  entomology,  and  busied  himself  in  finding,  rear- 
ing, and  making  drawings  of  various  members  of  the 
insect  world.  He  assisted  his  father  in  physical  and 
chemical  experiments,  and  began  to  indicate  a  peculiar 
aptitude  (says  Prof.  Youmans)  for  "manipulation  and 
invention."  At  the  age  of  thirteen  he  was  sent  to  study 
with  his  uncle,  the  Rev.  Thomas  Spencer,  rector  of  Hinton, 
with  whom  he  remained  three  years.  Here  his  attention 
appears  to  have  been  specially  directed  to  mathematics. 
On  returning  to  Derby,  it  is  reported  that  he  studied 
perspective  with  his  father,  on  the  principle  of  independent 
discovery.  The  problems  were  given  to  him  in  such  form 
that  he  had  himself  to  discover,  and  not  simply  learn 
by  rote,  their  solution.  His  father  is  said  to  have  published 
an  "Inventional  Geometry,"  prepared  on  this  plan.  At 
the  age  of  sixteen  a  "new  and  ingenious  theorem  in  de- 
scriptive geometry"  was  published  by  Herbert  Spencer  in 
the  "Civil  Engineers' and  Architects' Journal."  In  the 
following  year  he  began  work  as  a  civil  engineer  under 
Charles  Fox,  on  the  London  and  Birmingham  railway. 
After  four  years  of  such  employment  he  devoted  two 
more  to  mathematical  and  miscellaneous  studies.  "All 
the  time,"  says  a  writer  in  the  New  American  Encyclo- 
paedia, "he  had  in  progress  some  scheme  of  invention, 
improvements  in  watch-making,  machinery  for  the  manu- 
facture of  type  by  compression  of  the  metal  instead  of 
casting,  a  new  form  of  printing-press,  and  the  applica- 
tion of  electrotype  to  engraving,  afterward  known  as  the 
glyptograph." 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  whole  stress  of  Spencer's 
early  education,  as  well  as  the  general  bent  of  his  mind, 


HEEBERT  Sl>EN"CEll.  i  339 

were  preeminently  mechanical  and  physical.  \The  liberal 
training  of  the  university  was  denied  to  him,  as  to  Mill, 
and  it  does  not  appear  that  the  lack  of  it  was  supplied  for 
him  by  any  such  thorough  course  of  home  training  in 
classical  and  historical  literature  as  was  provided  for  his 
predecessor.  Indeed,  such  a  course  as  Mill  was  put 
through  would  have  been  almost  certainly  fatal  in  its 
consequences  for  one  of  Spencer's  delicate  constitution. 

But  the  taste  for  literary  work  was  also  early  developed 
in  Mr.  Spencer.  As  a  comparative  youth  he  became  a 
frequent  contributor  to  various  (mostly  scientific)  jour- 
nals. In  the  year  1842  he  began  to  publish  in  the  "Non- 
conformist" a  series  of  papers  on  "The  Proper  Sphere  of 
Government."  These  papers  were  collected  together  and 
published  in  pamphlet  form  in  the  following  year.  In 
the  same  year  he  visited  London  in  search  of  literary 
employment,  but  not  succeeding,  returned  again  to  the 
practice  of  engineering.  From  1848  to  1852  he  assisted 
in  editing  the  "Economist."  Henceforth  his  life  and 
work  were  those  of  a  writer.  In  numerous  review  articles 
on  the  most  varied  subjects  he  began  to  set  forth  the 
applications  of  the  conception  subsequently  developed  by 
him  in  more  systematic  form  —  the  conception  of  physical 
evolution  as  a  universal  law.  His  first  book,  which,  like 
all  his  other  later  ones,  is  pervaded  by  the  same  concep- 
tion, was  published  when  he  was  thirty  years  old,  in  1850, 
under  the  name  of  "Social  Statics."  In  1855  followed 
"The  Principles  of  Psychology."  In  1860  the  prospectus 
of  a  "system  of  philosophy,"  founded  on  the  idea  of 
physical  evolution,  was  announced,  and  to  the  production 
of  it  the  author,  amid  many  oppositions  of  infirm  health 
and  (at  the  first)  of  deficient  means,  has  steadily  devoted 


840  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

himself.  There  have  appeared,  in  accordance  with  this 
plan,  the  "First  Principles,"  "Biology,"  "Psychology," 
"Sociology"  (in  part),  and  "The  Data  of  Ethics";  not  to 
mention  other  writings  which,  if  not  a  systematic  part  of 
the  general  scheme,  are  all  subservient  to  its  main  purpose. 
Mr.  Spencer's  strength  lies  in  his  familiarity  with  the 
conceptions  of  physical  science.  He  astonishes  his  readers 
through  the  apparently  encyclopedic  comprehensiveness 
of  his  scientific  information.  This  qualifies  him  to  take 
up  and  repeat  with  an  effect  of  imposing  authority  the 
parable  of  his  British  predecessors,  to  the  general  efiect 
that  such  conceptions  and  such  information  constitute 
the  impassable  limit  of  all  possible  human  knowledge. 
His  weakness  is  in  his  deficient  knowledge  and  grasp  of 
pliilosophic  ideas.     1  find  no  evidence  that  the  history  of 

/philosophic  thought  is  much  better  than  a  sealed  book 
for  Mr.   Spencer.     He  -is  familiar  with    the   ideas  and 

^methods  of  British  psychology  and  psychological  pseudo- 
philosophy,  and  he  knows  something,  at  least,  of  that 
negative  side  of  Kant's  doctrine  which  we  have  above 
(Chapter  X)  recognized  as  akin  to,  and  due  to  the  influ- 
ence of,  British  thought.  But  this,  if  the  views  main- 
tained in  this  volume  are  correct,  must  be  regarded  as 
an  accomplishment  of  doubtful  philosophic  value.  At 
most,  it  can  only  encourage  an  insular  Philistinism,  and 
not  speculative  or  spiritual  insight.  But  when,  therefore, 
I  note  in  Mr.  Spencer  the  conspicuous  absence  of  such 
insight,  or  of  specifically  philosophical  intelligence,  I  am 
simply  noting  that  which  was  also  true  of  his  intellectual 
forerunners,  and  which  the  very  exclusiveness  of  his  scien- 
tific training  was  naturally  calculated  to  intensify,  rather 
than  to  correct 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  341 

The  unwelcome  verdict  which  the  student  of  the  his- 
tory of  philosophy  finds  himself  compelled  to  pass  upon 
that  line  of  British  thought  which  we  have  contemplated 
in  these  chapters  is,  that  it  remains  essentially  at  that 
stage  which  is  illustrated  by  the  pre-Socratic  "philoso- 
phers" of  ancient  Greece.  The  earliest  of  these  thinkers 
directed  their  attention  to  the  contemplation  of  the  phys- 
ical universe,  and  sought  to  invent  and,  more  or  less,  tq 
demonstrate  by  experimental  proof  some  descriptive  theory 
concerning  the  process  of  the  universe.  For  the  notion 
that  the  physical  world  had  resulted,  historically,  through 
some  evolutionary  process  suggested  itself  from  the  out- 
set. However  heterogeneous  and  varied  the  world,  in  its 
contents,  might  at  present  appear,  yet  it  was  held  that  all 
things  were  but  diverse  modifications  of  one  elementary 
material  nature.  Hence  the  earliest  "philosophers"  (aptly 
termed  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  the  rather,  "physi- 
ologists," or  physicists,  men  who  theorized  about  sensible 
nature)  applied  themselves  to  discover  what  was  the 
original  state  of  matter,  whether  water,  air,  fire,  or  some 
"indefinite"  element  (just  as,  now-a-days,  the^rizers  of 
the  same  class,  armed  with  a  better  knowledge  of  phys- 
ical phenomena,  conclude  that  it  was  gaseous,  or  "nebu- 
lar"), and  to  define,  or  at  least  name,  the  law  (order  or 
process)  of  the  subsequent  evolution  of  the  universe. 
Thus  it  was  common  with  them  to  hold  that  the  universe 
was  subject  to  periodic  evolution  and  dissolution  (like 
Spencer  to-day),  and  Heraclitus  went  so  far  as  to  estimate 
the  number  of  years  included  in  one  such  period.  One 
can  but  admire  the  divining  instinct  which  enabled  these 
children  in  science  to  anticipate  conclusions  which  the 
more  comprehensive  knowledge  of  our  days   is  deemed 


342  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

(in  general)  but  to  confirm.  Then  followed  other,  more 
reflective,  philosophers  (or  incipient  philosophers),  who 
perceived  that  these  physical  inquiries  concerning  the 
processes  of  phenomena  led  to  no  conclusions  concerning 
the  nature  of  being,  but  the  rather,  that  if  the  sensible 
conceptions  on  which  they  were  founded  were  to  be  re- 
garded as  ultimate,  human  reason  was  landed  in  an  in- 
extricable maze  of  contradictions.  (Compare,  in  modern 
times,  Kant's  "Antinomies  of  Pure  Reason,"  echoed  by 
Hamilton,  and  reechoed  by  Spencer.)  Then  arose  sophists 
like  Protagoras,  who  affirmed  that  nevertheless  sensible 
conceptions  —  appearances — were  indeed  ultimate  and 
final  for  man,  that  beyond  them  knowledge  could  not 
pass,  and  that  consequently  the  absolutely  real  and  true 
was  unknowable.  Reviewing  the  ground,  we  may  say 
that  the  mental  attitude  of  the  earliest  thinkers  corre- 
sponds roughly  to  that  of  the  men  of  pure  (physical) 
science  to-day.  Such  men,  while  engaged  in  their  pecu- 
liar, and  honorable,  and  useful  work,  are  unconscious  of 
philosophical  questions,  and  make  no  more  pretension  of 
answering  them  than  the  optician  (for  example)  does  of 
answering  questions  relative  to  the  theory  and  charm  of 
music.  Those  who  come  after  are  conscious  of  philosoph- 
ical questions,  but  unconscious,  or  only  dimly  conscious, 
of  the  method  by  which  the  answers  to  them  are  to  be 
sought.  They  are  dialecticians  and  rude  psychologists, 
but  have  not  yet  entered  the  portals  of  real,  positive  phi- 
losophy. These  are  first  opened  wide,  after  Socrates,  by 
Plato  and  Aristotle,  who  find  power  and  being,  the  rea- 
son, life  and  reality  of  "things,"  in  imperial,  knowable 
mind.  The  parallelism  with  British  philosophy,  which 
breaks  off  where  Plato  begins,  may  be  instructively  ex- 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  343 

tended  by  including  certain  phases  of  post-Aristotelian 
philosophy,  which  are  mainly  but  a  reversion  to,  and 
amplification  of,  the  ruder  pre-Platonic  types  of  thought. 
I  single  out,  for  mention,  the  stoic  renewal  of  a  purely 
physical  conception  of  the  universe,  with  the  accompany- 
ing bastard  conception  of  an  all-determining  fate,  which, 
in  theory,  plays  such  confusing  havoc  with  the  stoic's 
ineradicable  sense  of  moral  freedom.  Thus,  it  is  only 
when  the  philosophic  spirit,  in  the  spring-time  of  occi- 
dental thought,  was  either  unfledged  or  had  already  lost 
its  virile  power,  that  its  fruits  furnish  a  prototype  of  what 
has  too  generally  been  regarded  at  home  as  the  most 
"advanced"  type  of  British  thought  in  the  last  two 
centuries. 

As  for  Mr.  Spencer,  his  preliminary  (negative  or 
dialectical)  contention  is  that  the  ultra-phenomenal,  the 
real,  or  absolute,  mind,  matter,  Grod,  in  short,  "our  own 
and  all  other  existence,  is  a  mystery  absolutely  and  for- 
ever beyond  our  comprehension";  then,  positively,  he 
maintains  that  whatever  is  knowable,  i.e.  the  phenomenal, 
sensible,  has  received  its  final  explanation  for  us  when  it 
is  recognized  as  illustrating  a  law  of  universal  evolution 
from  homogeneity  to  heterogeneity,  or  of  dissolution, 
proceeding  in  the  contrary  direction. 

I  am  not  now  concerned  to  examine  whether  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's formula  of  evolution  is  correct  and  in  exact  agree- 
ment with  facts,  or  not.  It  has  been  vehemently  ques- 
tioned, but  whether  with  reason  or  not,  it  is  wholly  beside 
my  present  purpose  to  inquire.  The  conception  of  evolu- 
tion is,  as  such,  neither  philosophical  nor  anti-philosoph- 
ical, neither  religious  nor  irreligious.  If  true,  it  is  true  for 
the  same  reason  for  which  the  conception  of  gravitation  is 


344  muTisu  thouuht  and  tuinkers. 

a  true  one,  namely,  because  it  is  agreeable  to  sensible  fact. 
It  is  a  physical  conception,  and  the  "  Law  of  Evolution," 
if  correctly  stated  and  duly  established,  is  but  an  accu- 
rate statement  of  the  observed  or  observable  order  of 
sensible  phenomena.  The  conception  of  evolution  diflfers 
from  other  physical  conceptions  only  in  its  claim  to  great- 
est generality.  It  seeks  to  sum  up  in  one  phrase,  or  in 
one  scientific  law,  all  the  cases  of  law  or  order  which  are 
visible  in  the  phenomenal  universe.  If  defective  in  state- 
ment, and,  by  reason  of  its  very  generality,  difficult  to  be 
completely  demonstrated,  it  is  certainly  correct  in  idea. 
The  phenomenal  universe  is  everywhere  the  illustration 
of  law.  It  is  only  in  virtue  of  this  fact  that  it  is  in  any 
sense  rationally  apprehensible  or  intelligible,  for  it  is  only 
in  virtue  of  this  fact  that  it  presents  a  tangible  surface  or 
"handle"  to  knowing  mind.  Nothing  in  the  universe 
but  order  is,  strictly  speaking,  knowable,  since  mind  can 
know  nothing  that  is  not  in  some  way  cognate  to  itself, 
and  nothing  in  the  phenomenal  universe  but  order,  which 
is  the  direct  proclamation  and  manifestation  of  mind,  is 
thus  cognate.  Moreover,  all  the  cases  of  order  in  the  uni- 
verse (all  the  particular,  special  "laws,"  which  science  dis- 
covers) would  conspire  to  produce  chaos,  and  so  destroy 
their  own  intelligibility,  if  they  did  not  (in  Leibnitz's 
phrase)  "consent  together,"  i.e.  if  they  were  not  harmoni- 
ously united  as  parts  in  one  organic,  universal  order. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  directive  and  almost  inspir- 
ing influence  of  such  a  general  conception  as  this  on  the 
labor  of  scientific  specialists  in  all  the  subordinate  depart- 
ments of  physical  inquiry.  And  when  Mr.  Spencer, 
therefore,  taking  up  an  idea  which  is  as  old  as  human 
thought,  but  which,  in  the  peculiar  form  in  which  it  is 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  345 

adopted  by  Mr.  Spencer,  had  been  specially  hovering  over 
the  scientific  world  for  the  past  fifty  years,  gave  it  a  defi- 
nite shape,  made  it  the  central  object  of  his  vigorous 
teaching,  and  illustrated  its  applicability  most  plausibly 
and  variously,  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  exerted  a  quick- 
ening and  captivating  influence  upon  a  vast  number  of 
scientific  minds.  This,  thus  far,  is  as  it  should  be.  It  is 
the  scientific  workers  who  will  have  finally  to  establish  or 
disprove  the  correctness  of  Mr.  Spencer's  special  formula. 
That  is  not  a  question  of  pure  thought.  Meanwhile  the 
conception  involved  serves  its  legitimate  and  valuable 
scientific  purpose,  just  so  far  as  it  keeps  before  the  minds 
of  scientific  men  the  ideal,  above  noted,  of  an  universal, 
all-inclusive  organic  order  in  the  whole  realm  of  phenom- 
ena. I  may  go  farther,  and  add  that  it  serves  a  philo- 
sophic and  religious  purpose,  so  far  as,  by  being  in  accord- 
ance with  the  aforesaid  ideal  and  confirmed  by  observation, 
it  illustrates  comprehensively,  in  its  application  to  the 
realm  of  phenomenal  existence,  the  central  truth  of  phi- 
losophy and  religion  —  the  truth  that  existence,  consid- 
ered absolutely,  is  spiritual  and  rational,  and  hence  that 
derivative  or  phenomenal  existence  must,  by  its  order, 
proclaim  its  own  spiritual  and  rational  origin.  Every 
scientific  law  illustrates  this ;  and,  of  course,  a  law  com- 
prehensive enough  to  include  in  itself  and  so  sum  up  all 
other,  minor  scientific  laws,  would  do  so  in  the  highest 
degree. 

But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  this  philosophical 
significance  of  scientific  law  is  a  thing  with  which  science, 
as  such,  has  nothing  to  do.  It  has  simply  to  ascertain 
and  record  the  order  of  phenomena.  It  has  to  do  only 
with  sensible  matter  of  fact,  not  with  ideal  truth.    It 


346  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKEHS. 

determines  what  are  the  experimentally  observable  rules 
concerning  the  coexistence  and  sequence  of  phenomena. 
Its  laws  (as  we  have  seen  elsewhere)  are  not  philosophical 
principles.  The  establishment  of  a  new  scientific  law,  no 
matter  how  comprehensive,  is  not  the  establishment  of  a 
new  philosophic  principle.  (It  is  at  most  only  —  as  hint- 
ed just  above — the  confirmation  of  an  old  one.)  The 
fact  of  its  comprehensiveness  does  not  in  the  slightest 
degree  modify  its  nature  as  a  mere  rule  of  order  concern- 
ing phenomena,  or  clothe  it  with  the  vital,  dynamic,  onto- 
logical  attributes  of  a  philosophical  principle.  Strictly 
speaking,  therefore,  the  phrase  "  Philosophy  of  Evolution  " 
is  an  egregious  misnomer.  Evolution  is  no  more  phi- 
losophy than  gravitation  is.  It  has  no  other  kind  of  philo- 
sophical significance  than  that  which  may  be  indirectly 
connected  with  any  other  scientific  law.  Conceding  that 
the  law  of  evolution  has  been  established,  the  nature  and 
the  wording  of  philosophical  problems  have  not  been 
changed  one  whit.  Mr.  Spencer  and  his  followers  may 
affect  to  think  otherwise,  and  beginners  in  philosophy, 
whose  first  intellectual  nourishment  is  derived  from  the 
perusal  of  their  works,  will  almost  certainly  be  persuaded 
of  the  absolutely  revolutionary  and  finally  decisive  char- 
acter of  the  "  new"  conception,  in  its  relations  to  philo- 
sophic thought.  In  reality,  all  that  is  discernible  in  the 
"philosophy"  of  evolution,  is  a  recurrence  of  the  old 
scientific  prejudice  which  has  rested  like  a  pall  on  British 
thought  since  Francis  Bacon's  time.  The  so-called  ^^phi- 
losophy of  evolution "  is  an  extra-scientific  accretion  of 
philosophical  convictions,  for  the  most  part  negative, 
wholly  dogmatic,  amusingly  oracular,  and  thoroughly 
irrelevant,  about  a  scientific  law  of  phenomena,  which  is 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  347 

held  to  sum  up  all  that  is  positively  knowable.  The 
convictions  are  not  new,  nor  do  they  follow  from  the 
"new"(?)  scientific  law  in  question.  They  rest  on  the 
same  general  grounds  from  which  the  doubts,  denials, 
and  agnosticisms  of  earlier  British  thinkers  were  derived; 
on  the  same  arbitrary  substitution  of  sensible  for  rational 
conceptions,  of  static  appearance  for  dynamic  substance,  of 
death  for  life,  of  empirical  psychology  for  philosophy.  For 
Spencer,  as  for  his  forerunners,  "  conception  implies  im- 
agination." The  exclusive  source  and  highest,  and  indeed 
only,  type  of  knowledge  is  sensible,  static,  imaginative, 
panoramic  consciousness.  Knowledge  is  confined  to  felt 
phenomena.  It  is  the  accurate  recognition  of  the  historic 
or  matter-of-fact  order  of  phenomena.  In  other  words, 
knowledge  is  essentially  identical  in  nature  with  physical 
science;  this  is  with  Spencer,  as  with  his  forerunners,  at 
once  premise  and  conclusion. 

Mr.  Spencer  holds  that  the  real  is  unknowable.  This 
does  not  follow  from  the  law  of  evolution,  but  from  the 
assumptions  above  noted.  That  it  follows  necessarily 
from  such  assumptions,  has  been  so  often  demonstrated, 
from  the  time  of  the  ancient  Eleatics  and  Sophists  down 
to  Kant,  and  is  a  truth  so  obvious  to  the  simplest  in- 
spection, that  it  has  become  a  commonplace  of  philo- 
sophic thought.  In  an  especial  manner,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  it  become  a  commonplace  of  British  thought,  in 
which  it  also  figured  as  a  piece  of  profound  and  decisive 
wisdom.  It  is  not  wonderful,  therefore,  that  Mr.  Spencer 
deems  it  necessary  to  devote  but  a  comparatively  small 
space  to  the  demonstration  of  this  thesis,  or  that  he 
makes  this  (from  his  arbitrary  premises)  easy  task  still 
easier  for  himself  by  citing  bodily  from  his  predecessors. 


348  BRITISH   THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

As  an  argument  addressed  to  those  who,  not  dogmatic- 
ally, but  on  good  grounds  of  history  and  of  self-con- 
scious, rationally  vitalized  experience,  claim  to  know 
better,  or,  in  other  words,  to  those  who  appreciate  the 
nature  of  philosophic  truth  and  of  the  data  on  which  and 
the  method  by  which  it  is  theoretically  established,  it 
has  not  the  slightest  weight.  What  is  proved  is,  that 
if  sensible  or  phenomenal  conceptions,  such  as  time, 
space,  physical  "substance,"  and  scientific  causation 
(regular,  temporal  sequence  merely,  or  scientific  law,)  be 
taken  as  ultimate,  we  involve  ourselves  in  contradictions, 
the  recognition  of  which  is,  pro  tanto,  the  recognition  of 
our  nescience.  Ultimate  reality  cannot  by  their  aid 
become  an  object  of  thought.  The  argument,  thus  con- 
sidered, is  good,  and  the  conclusion  is  universally  ac- 
cepted in  all  but  popular,  unreflective,  and  uncultured 
thought.  The  argument  becomes  sophistical  and  easily 
imposes  on  an  immature  learner,  through  the  unconcealed 
postulate  which  accompanies  it,  that  these  conceptions, 
if  any,  must  indeed  be  regarded  as  ultimate  in  human 
knowledge;  which  being  conceded,  the  argument  of  course 
suffices  to  establish  the  "imbecility "  of  our  understand- 
ings and  the  necessity  and  legitimacy  of  taking  refuge  from 
the  burdensome  labor  of  real,  vital  cognition  in  the  asylum 
of  our  enforced  ignorance.  This  postulate  none  but  a  tyro 
in  speculation,  or  insight  into  living  truth  (a  thing  gener- 
ally different  from  scientific  information  concerning  the 
phenomena  of  the  universe)  will  ever  grant  or  has  ever 
granted.  Philosophy  has  never  had  a  positive  content  ex- 
cept when  it  has  called  the  ultimate  (not  the  relative)  valid- 
ity of  the  conceptions  referred  to  in  question.  But  philoso- 
phy with  a  positive  content  has  long  existed  historically, 


HEKBERT   8PEN-CER.  349 

and  its  living  well-spring  has  an  ever-present  existence  in 
the  self-conscious,  spiritual  personality  of  man.  The 
validity  of  the  former  is  not  examined,  still  less  is  it 
disproved,  by  Mr.  Spencer,  whose  mind,  for  the  rest,  on 
the  side  of  philosophical  or  speculative  intelligence  ap- 
pears to  be  a  complete  blank.  And  from  the  latter, 
notwithstanding  that  it  exists  in  him,  as  in  every  living 
man,  he  neglects  to  draw,  because  his  inherited  and  loug- 
nourished  scientific  prejudices  prevent  him  from  recog- 
nizing it  in  its  efiective  and  rationally  illuminating 
reality.  In  the  philosophy  of  the  Unknowable  the  dog- 
matic sensational  negativism  of  the  eighteenth  century 
simply  lives  again. 

But  Spencer,  like  all  of  Hume's  successors  in  the 
employment  of  the  purely  sensational  method  in  philoso- 
phy, is  less  consistent  than  Hume,  in  that  he  positively 
affirms  the  existence  of  the  unknowable.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  this  method  the  most  that  can  be  said  is,  that 
the  real,  if  existent,  is  invisible;  it  does  not  come  within 
the  range  of  sensitive  consciousness.  Were  man  as  a 
knowing  being  confined  to  such  consciousness  (a  contra- 
diction in  terms,  which  Spencer,  in  common  with  his 
predecessors,  holds  as  an  axiomatic  truth),  it  were  psyco- 
logically  impossible  that  the  conception  of  the  sensibly 
unknowable  should  enter  his  mind.  The  fact  that  it  does 
thus  enter  is  immediate  proof  that  man  is  more  than  a 
physically  sensitive  organism,  and  that  knowledge  is 
something  more  than  merely  mechanical,  analytical  dis- 
section and  registry  of  passively  felt  experiences,  or  of 
"phenomena."  It  indicates  that  his  is  an  actively  living, 
rational  nature,  capable  of  organic  insight,  of  rational 
conceptions  —  capable  of  forming,  for  example,  the  non- 


350  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

sensible  conception  of  being,  and  of  finding  it  realized, 
not  in  the  pictures  of  panoramic  consciousness,  not  in  a 
tiling  of  sense,  but  in  a  vitalized  object  of  rational  intel- 
ligence, or  in  the  effective  light  and  power  of  spirit.  A 
conception  which  is  peculiarly  of  this  order  is  the  con- 
ception of  power.  Hume,  as  we  know,  discovered  that 
for  sensational  psychology  this  was  an  illegitimate  con- 
ception, and  in  making  declaration  to  this  effect  he  but 
anticipated  the,  now  universal  voice  of  physical  science. 
Hume's  attitude  was,  like  Spencer's,  the  attitude  (psycho- 
logically considered)  of  physical  science,  which  but  hon- 
estly and  honorably  confesses  the  limitations  of  its  true 
province,  when  it  restricts  this  province  to  the  field  of 
sensible  phenomena,  and  which  now  universally  and 
naturally  professes  to  find  no  reality  of  power  or  "force," 
but  only  phenomena  of  motion.  For  it  force  is  an  "ab- 
straction," a  convenient,  and  perhaps  practically  neces- 
sary "auxiliary,"  or  working  "idea,"  but  not  an  object  of 
scientific  knowledge,  not  a  scientific  reality.  It  is  not  an 
object  of  sensible  observation,  it  is  not  a  "phenomenon," 
and  if  it  makes  its  way  into  the  armory  of  scientific 
ideas,  it  is  (as  regards  its  origin)  an  interloper  there,  a 
stranger  come  from  the  invisible,  ultra-phenomenal,  but 
ever-present,  ultimately  real,  and  hence  all-controlling 
land  of  man's  non-sensible,  rational,  spiritual  being.  If 
Mr.  Spencer  (as  is  the  case)  makes  use  of  this  conception, 
he  does  not  derive  it  from  the  scientific  law  of  evolution, 
which  is  but  the  law  of  the  matter-of-fact  "redistribution 
of  matter  and  motion " ;  it  does  not  legitimately  follow 
from  his  (professedly)  purely  scientific  {i.e.  empirico-psy- 
chological)  attitude  and  presuppositions.  It  is,  from  his 
point  of  view,  an  arbitrai'y,  extra-scientific,  though  in  its 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  351 

real  implications,  genuinely  philosopliical  idea,  which  it 
is  indeed  highly  natural  (since  all  men,  Spencer  included, 
are  more  than  mere  physico-scientific  beings)  to  employ, 
but  for  which  Mr.  Spencer  has  and  furnishes  no  scientific 
justification.  Just  so  far  as  he  employs  this  conception 
he  contradicts  himself,  on  good  (though  unacknowledged) 
grounds,  it  is  true,  but  in  a  manner  which  demonstrates 
the  inadequacy  and  falseness  of  the  presuppositions,  and 
of  the  method,  which  he  persistently  advocates. 

It  is  significant,  now,  that  in  seeking  (singularly 
enough)  to  name  the  unknowable  (which,  if  absolutely 
such,  as  we  are  assured  it  is,  must  be  unnameable),  Mr. 
Spencer  hits  upon  the  words  "power,"  and  "persistent 
force."  The  sensibly  unknowable  (which  is  the  only  and 
final  object  of  Mr.  Spencer's  demonstrations)  is  indeed 
power,  which,  however,  because  sensibly  unknowable,  is 
none  the  less  an  extremely  distinct  object  of  rational 
intelligence.  It  is  a  vital  conception  and  a  vital  reality, 
given  in  living,  i.e.  rational,  spiritual  experience.  (Com- 
pare above,  pp.  90,  97.)  It  is  an  active  attribute  of  intel- 
ligent spirit,  and  hence  cannot  be  a  mere  "state  of  con- 
sciousness," the  only  (quasi)  reality  which  sensational 
psychology  recognizes.  When,  therefore,  the  unknowable, 
absolute,  ultimately  real  is  termed  by  Mr.  Spencer  power, 
definite  recognition  is  implicitly  given  to  that  realm  of 
ultra-phenomenal,  intelligible,  non-sensible  reality,  which 
in  self-conscious  intelligence  is  knoiun  (not  simply 
named)  as  spirit,  as  living,  actively  synthetic  mind,  as 
person,  or  (taken  absolutely)  as  God;  the  real  is  indeed 
power,  because  it  is  spirit.  But  this  implication  of  his 
phraseology  is  not  explicitly  recognized  by  Mr.  Spencer. 
The  rather  it  is  wholly  obfuscated,  if  not  absolutely 


362  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

donied.  Having  no  conception  of  personality  otherwise 
than  as  a  mysteriously  necessary,  but  unfathomable  ad- 
junct (given  only  in  the  form  of  "  belief")  of  sensitive, 
conscious  states  {a  la  Reid  and  Mill),  he  yet  argues  against 
the  personality  of  the  "unknowable,"  as  though  this 
conception  were  quite  intelligible  to  him,  and  denoted 
nothing  else  than  these  conscious  states  themselves.  In 
other  words,  just  as  soon  as  he  seeks  to  define  a  rational 
conception,  he  clothes  it  in  sensuous  integuments,  and 
then  substitutes  the  latter  for  the  reality  which  tliey  do 
but  conceal.  (This  procedure  is  also  illustrated  by  Spen- 
cer, and  by  the  predecessors  whose  arguments  he  imitates 
or  borrows,  in  what  he  has  to  say  of  the  "infinite"  and 
"absolute.")  Mr.  Sjoencer's  favorite  phrase  for  the  "un- 
knowable" is  "persistent  force."  "Force"  is  the  scientific 
name  for  "power,"  and,  as  such,  has  that  peculiar  empti- 
ness of  positive  signification  (as  above  noted),  that  im- 
posing darkness,  and  inscrutableness,  that  (to  sense) 
mysterious  connotation  of  inevitableness,  which  fit  it 
admirably  for  anthropomorphic  investiture  with  the 
habiliments  of  mechanical  fate.  With  these  habiliments 
Mr.  Spencer  practically — and  persistently — invests  his 
"  unknowable." 

But  Mr.  Spencer  withdraws  himself  still  further  from 
recognition  in  the  "Unknowable"  of  absolute  being  in 
the  form  of  spiritual  reality,  by  seeking  to  show  that 
it  is  something,  and  what  it  is,  in  sensible,  physically 
conditioned  consciousness.  Here  he  lapses  completely 
into  the  order  of  views  which  his  general  theory  of  knowl- 
edge requires.  For  this  theory  the  notion  of  power  is  a 
pure  assumption.  What  is  known,  is  what  is  given  in 
the  shape  of  sensitively-conscious  states.    Mr.   Spencer 


HERBEET  SPENCER.  353 

doubtless  perceives  the  absurdity  of  asserting,  from  this 
point  of  view,  the  existence  and  reality  of  the  unknow- 
able, unless  it  be  somehow  thus  given,  and  so,  after  all, 
in  a  measure  "known."  Accordingly  the  unknowable 
"Unconditioned,"  the  "Absolute,"  the  finally  Keal,  is 
declared  to  be  given  us  in  the  form  of  "indefinite  con- 
sciousness," the  "raw  material  of  thought,"  which  remains 
when  all  the  conditions  and  limits  of  definite  conscious- 
ness are  withdrawn.  True,  these  conditions  and  limits 
cannot  be  removed,  and  the  "indefinite"  or  "uncondi- 
tioned" consciousness  does  not  exist  for  us,  except  in 
the  form  of  a  suppositious  imagination.  Eeal  imagina- 
tion (which,  for  sensational  psychology,  means  definitely 
imaging  in  consciousness,  or  having  a  conscious  stale)  or 
"thought"  (which  for  Mr.  Spencer  and  his  predecessors 
means  the  same  thing)  is  definite,  because  conditioned 
and  limited.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  Mr.  Spencer  declares, 
"thinking  is  relationing."  The  "conditioned"  (under 
which  we  are  always  to  understand  something  which 
can  be  definitely  figured  or  imaged  in  sensitive  conscious- 
ness) is  said  to  be  alone  "thinkable."  But  the  "mo- 
mentum of  thought  inevitably  carries  us  beyond  con- 
ditioned existence  to  unconditioned  existence,"  i.e.  from 
the  imaginable  to  the  unimaginable,  from  the  "think- 
able" to  the  "unthinkable."  Thought  seeks  by  its 
own  "momentum"  to  escape  from  itself,  to  annihilate 
itself!  A  singular  reversal  of  the  law  of  self-preser- 
vation, or  "  struggle  for  existence,"  indeed !  And  a 
singularly  "raw"  conception,  indeed,  is  this  of  an 
absolutely  "  indefinite  consciousness,"  which  is  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms,  which  can  consequently  be  "given" 
in  no  sensitive  experience,  but  which  is  nevertheless 
15* 


354  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

asserted  by  "scientific,"  "experimental"  psychology  aa 
the  basis  of  "an  ever-present  sense  of  real  exist- 
ence" and  of  all  "our  intelligence"!  What  all  this 
signifies,  on  Mr.  Spencer's  part,  is,  that  he  is  seeking 
anew  to  realize,  psychologically,  the  spurious  conception 
of  a  "^^iM^r-in-itself,"  noted  in  a  previous  chapter.  After 
all  the  demonstrations,  in  which  Mr.  Spencer  has  assisted, 
that  the  ultimately  real  cannot  be  an  object  of  sense,  that 
to  attempt  to  think  it  with  the  aid  of  sensible  concep- 
tions is  to  land  one's  self  in  insoluble  contradictions, 
sensational  psychology  wearies  of  its  "  imbecility,"  waxes 
valiant  in  dogmatism,  and,  after  reducing  the  "unknow- 
able," the  absolute  reality,  the  "  king  of  being,"  to  an 
invisible  minimum  (a  mere  name)  of  sensible  affection, 
declares  it  to  be  not  a  rational  truth,  but  a  psycho- 
physical fact  ("state")  of  sensitive  experience.*  But  in 
the  thing-in-itself  there  lurks  a  glimmer  of  rational 
connotation,  which  rescues  it  from  absolute  nonsense. 
The  important  thing  about  it  is,  not  that  we  have  an 
(impossible)  sense  of  it,  but  that  it  is  rationally  (Mr. 
Spencer,  in  common  with  all  sensational  psychologists, 
says,  in  effect,  irratmially,  ^'tnysteriously")  believed  to 
be  a  power  capable  of  affecting  us;  and  so,  by  this 
element,  it  leads  back,  in  consistent  thouglit,  to  the 
recognition  of  Spirit,  which  is  the  only  absolute  deposi- 
tary of  power. 

One  of  the  most  striking  illustrations  of  the  utter 
fatuity   of  eighteenth    century   psychological   "  philoso- 

*  One  may  fairly  infer  that  the  "  Unconditioned  "  comes  nearest  to  being 
given,  in  the  form  of  a  sensitive  state,  to  those  creatures  which  have  reached 
the  first  and  lowest  stage  of  evolution  referred  to  in  Mr.  Spencer's  Psychology, 
Part  V,  Chap.  VI,  and  whoso  "  unorganized  consciousness  ■"  is  said  to  constitute 
the  "raw  material  of  mind." 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  855 

phy"  was  its  quixotic  devotion  to  tlie  discussion  of  the 
alleged  problem  concerning  the  "reality"  of  the  external 
world.  The  belated  descendants  of  the  masters  of  this 
philosophy  still  speak  of  it  (in  the  words  of  Prof.  Bain) 
as  the  "GREAT  metaphysical  problem  of  the  eighteenth 
century,"  and  indeed  of  all  centuries.  Mr.  Spencer  is 
obviously  of  the  same  mind,  and  in  his  Psychology 
marches  bravely  and  confidently  up  to  meet  the  ques- 
tion, having  his  feet  shod  with  the  elastic  sandals  of  an 
accomplished  verbal  dialectician,  and  bearing  on  his 
tongue  the  whole  gospel  and  wisdom  of  descriptive  psy- 
chology. Is  it  our  exalted  and  exalting  privilege,  as 
rational  beings,  to  believe  "that  there  exists  an  outer 
object"?  This  is  the  weighty  question,  and  he  who  be- 
lieves he  may  answer  it  in  the  affirmative,  is  described  to 
us  as  a  "realist,"  while  he  who  denies  it  is  an  "idealist." 
The  former,  with  the  "  rustic,"  believes  in  "  matter,"  the 
latter,  only  in  "  sensations."  The  latter  is  sceptical  con- 
cerning the  existence  of  outer  reality;  hence  the  common 
phrase  with  Spencer,  "Idealism,  or  Scepticism,"  intimat- 
ing that  the  two  terms  denote  the  same  thing.  "Ideal- 
ism," as  thus  defined,  is  one  of  the  vain  "words  of  meta- 
physicians "  and  is  fairly  synonymous  with  "  metaphysics." 
(It  must  be  confessed  that  in  this  use  of  terms  Mr.  Spen- 
cer scarcely  offends  either  the  literary  or  common  usage 
of  the  English  language;  the  peculiar  poverty,  or,  rather, 
flabbiness,  of  significance,  too  commonly  attached  to  terms 
of  such  virile  import  as  "realism,"  "idealism,"  "philoso- 
phy," and  "metaphysics,"  is  the  hollow  bequest  made  to 
the  currency  of  English  thought  by  physical  science,  and 
by  sensational  psychology,  its  child  and  ally,  masquerad- 
ing for  two  hundred  years  and  more  in  the  name  of  phi- 


356  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

losophy.)  Mr.  Spencer,  true  to  the  method  of  Locke,  the 
common  master  of  Spencer  and  of  his  other  most  illus- 
trious predecessors  and  contemporaries,  looks  to  solve  the 
problem  in  question  by  "inspecting  the  phenomena  of 
consciousness  in  their  order  of  genesis ;  using,"  he  contin- 
ues, "for  our  *erecting-glass,'  the  mental  biography  of  a 
child,  or  the  developed  conception  of  things  held  in  com- 
mon by  the  savage  and  the  rustic."  In  addition  to  this 
powerful  means  of  insight,  he  betakes  himself  to  "  mutual 
exploration"  of  his  "limbs;"  he  notices  that  the  vivid 
and  faint  states  of  consciousness  (corresponding  respect- 
ively to  "matter"  and  "mind,"  or  to  "object"  and  "sub- 
ject") are  distinguished  by  circumstances  which  confirm 
our  ineradicable  persuasion  of  their  absolute  distinction, 
and  that  each  class  of  states  is  held  together  by  a  "nexus" 
or  "principle  of  continuity,"  which  cannot,  indeed,  be 
observed,  but  is  an  article  of  inexpugnable  belief,  an  object 
of  "transcendent"  {i.e.  for  sensational  psychology,  of  no 
real)  consciousness,  founded,  however,  above  all  —  this 
clinches  the  demonstration  —  in  a  nervous  structure,  which 
has  been  organizing  and  consolidating  itself  through  a 
gradual  process  of  evolution,  through  countless  ages. 
"  Realism"  is  triumphant.  But,  hold  !  not  the  realism  of 
the  rustic,  but  the  "  transfigured  realism "  of  agnosti- 
cism. There  is  a  reality,  and  this  reality  is  doubtless  a 
thing  of  sense,  but  it  is  not  for  our  senses.  Time  and 
space  are  {i.e.  have  become  through  physical  evolution) 
necessary  forms  of  our  thought  (sensation),  and  in  some 
way  they  doubtless  correspond  to  attributes  of  real  exist- 
ence. But  how,  we  know  not.  This  real  existence  is  for 
us  only  u  brute  "power"  to  compel  us  to  have  the  sub- 
jective   but  (absolutely  considered)  wholly  illusory  ideas 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  357 

(pictures  in  sensitive  consciousness)  of  which  we  are  con- 
sciously aware ;  in  all  other  respects  it  is  wholly  unknown 
and  unknowable.  Eealism  is  triumphant!  There  "exists 
an  outer  object,"  though  not  in  any  sense  of  the  word 
"outer"  that  we  can  comprehend!  In  reality,  as  is  obvi- 
ous, this  is  only  a  practical,  not  a  consistent,  theoretical 
triumph.  Hume,  too,  held  practically,  under  the  myste- 
rious inspiration  of  "nature,"  to  "realism."  All  that 
Spencer  theoretically  accomplishes,  on  the  basis  of  sensa- 
tional psychology,  is  a  revindication  of  "  idealism."  The 
only  things  of  which  we  know  in  the  form  of  conscious 
states,  are  for  him  these  states  themselves;  all  else  is 
mere  matter  of  "transcendent"  consciousness,  i.e.  not  of 
sensitive  consciousness  at  all,  hence  no  object  of  knowl- 
edge; hence,  as  to  its  positive  contents  for  us, pure  naught! 
This  "  transcendent,"  "  indefinable,"  "  indefinite  conscious- 
ness," is  nothing  but  Hume's  "  nature."  Its  content  may 
be  summed  up  in  the  phrase  "  unknowable,  but  constrain- 
ing power."  This  content,  being  confessedly  extra-con- 
scious (for  sensational  psychology),  is  not  evolved  through 
any  development  of  nervous  structure.  Nervous  struc- 
ture, like  everything  else  which  has  a  physical,  evolution- 
ary history,  is  itself  (from  the  point  of  view  of  psychology) 
only  a  part  of  the  sensitive  consciousness  itself,  and  if,  as  is 
claimed,  the  history  of  the  development  of  such  structure 
is  the  obverse  of  the  history  of  sensitive  consciousness, 
the  former  is  no  exijlanaiion — it  is  at  most  only  a  phe- 
nomenal, scientific  descrijjtion  —  of  the  latter,  and  still 
less  does  it  explain  that  which  "transcends"  the  latter, 
namely,  the  notion  of  power.  The  fact  is,  Spencer  illus- 
trates anew  what  we  found  illustrated  in  the  case  of  J.  S. 
Mill,  and  what  must  be  illustrated  in  the  case  of  every 


358  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

sensational  psychologist  who  has  not  accomplished  the 
impossible  feat  of  divesting  himself  of  his  vital,  spiritual 
humanity  (i.e.  of  his  true  reality)  —  he  illustrates  the  in- 
ability of  pure  (physical)  "science,"  or  of  so-called  em- 
pirical, sensitively  observational  psychology,  to  proceed  a 
step  beyond  the  purely  analytical  description  of  phenom- 
ena, and  to  enter  into  the  path  of  real  explanation  (to  sub- 
stitute comprehension  for  simple  apprehension),  without 
assuming  that  which  is  not  given  among  its  data,  and 
which  it  can,  therefore,  only  recognize  upon  brute  psycho- 
logical compulsion,  as  "transcendent,"  inexplicable  fact, 
and,  for  the  rest,  must  declare  "  unknowable."  Doubtless 
we  ought  to  be  thankful  to  the  self-appointed  interpreters 
of  science  for  allowing  us  so  much,  but  when  they  give 
out  their  forced,  and  mostly  negative,  concessions  as  mark- 
ing the  farthest  attainable  limit  of  human  wisdom,  we 
are  surely  entitled,  in  the  name  of  self-conscious,  vital 
reason,  of  living  ideal  truth,  incorporated  in  man,  and  the 
vitalizing  and  self-illuminating  essence  of  all  reality,  to 
enter  an  energetic  protest. 

With  regard,  now,  to  the  above-mentioned  alleged 
problem  of  "realism"  or  "idealism,"  the  discussion  of 
it  shows  (as  Mr.  Spencer's  own  discussion  illustrates 
anew)  that  it  is  no  problem.  The  phenomenal  world, 
the  familiar  world  of  time  and  space,  possesses  all  that 
"  reality,"  and  just  that  kind  of  reality,  which  it  is 
"seen"  to  possess.  Do  we  "see"  what  we  "see"?  Is 
our  involuntary  experience  what  it  is?  The  question  is 
wholly  nugatory,  and  the  answer  which  results  from 
long-winded  and  pompous  discussion  is  the  one  which 
the  questions  bear  upon  their  face.  But  it  is  quite 
another  thing  to  ask,  whether  what  we  "see"  and  ex- 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  359 

perience,  i.e.  whether  the  states  of  conscious,  sensitive, 
physically  organic  feeling  which  are  vouchsafed  to  us 
correspond  to  the  (intrinsically  rational)  conception  of 
being.  And  here  again  the  question  bears  on  its  face 
its  own  answer.  Being  is  (psychologically  considered) 
a  rational,  intelligible  notion,  not  a  state  or  image  of 
sensitive  consciousness,  i.e.  not  a  "phenomenon."  The 
phenomenal  is,  in  knowledge,  essentially  surface-state, 
inert  appearance,  but  possessing  all  the  "truth*"  which 
appearance  can  possess ;  it  is  not  deceptive ;  it  serves 
its  normal  use.  Being,  on  the  other  hand,  is  dynamic, 
life,  soul,  spirit.  In  examining  the  attributes  of  phe- 
nomena as  such,  we  do  not  find  these  attributes  of  being. 
We  say,  therefore,  not  that  phenomena  are  not  what  they 
are  (they  are  what  they  appear,  their  existence  is  iden- 
tical with  their  appearance),  but  that  they  do  not  fulfill 
the  requirements  of  the  notion  of  absolute  or  independ- 
ent being.  They  are  only  functions,  functional  results, 
products,  of  that  which  truly  is,  namely,  of  potent  spirit. 
Their  "being"  is  not  essential,  independent,  absolute, 
but  dependent  and  derivative.  Positive,  philosophical 
idealism,  the  idealism  taught  by  all  affirmative  philosophy 
since  the  beginning  of  the  world  (not  by  its  illegitimate 
psychological  and  "  scientific  "  substitutes),  proclaims  this 
(which  is,  after  all,  only  the  first  and  relatively  negative 
portion  of  its  message,  the  portion  on  which  Berkeley's 
youthful  mind  principally  rested),  and  goes  on  to  de- 
serve its  name  by  demonstrating,  positively,  that  being 
is  such  as  above  described.  When  it  declares  that  being 
is  ideal,  it  does  not  (like  the  "idealism"  of  pure  sensa- 
tional psychology)  mean  that  being  partakes  of  the  nature 
of  sensible   "ideas"  or  images,   conscious  functions   of 


360  BKITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

nervous  structure ;  this  were  to  stultify  itself,  to  make 
unjust  and  unmeaning  game  of  thought,  and  to  treat 
being  as  identical  with  appearance.  For  it  the  ideal  is 
rational,  and  because  rational,  living,  and  because  living, 
spiritual.  The  rock  of  being  is  absolute  spirit.  "  Mind 
is  the  king  of  the  universe."  The  physical  universe,  the 
world  of  appearance,  subsists  by  the  power  of  Mind.  To 
the  outer  portals  of  this  conception  we  find  Spencer 
coming  in  his  verbal  recognition  of  brute,  but,  as  we 
have  seen,  from  his  point  of  view,  necessarily  unintel- 
ligible Power.  Further  than  this  the  limitations  of  his 
non-philosophical  method  and  data,  and  his  consequent 
utter  lack  of  insight  into  the  nature  of  genuinely  philo- 
sophical conceptions,  do  not  permit  him  to  proceed.  But 
it  is  too  bad  that  he  (like  Mill  and  others  of  the  same 
class)  should  be  permitted  to  travesty  the  thought  of 
thinkers  like  Berkeley  and  Kant,  by  attributing  to  their 
inquiries  absolutely  the  same  contractedness  of  purport 
which  belongs  to  his  own.  These  men,  heaven  knows, 
suffered  enough  from  psychological  prejudice,  but  they 
were  not  such  utter  strangers  to  philosophical  intelli- 
gence as  is  implied  in  ascribing  to  them  the  negative 
"idealism"  of  sensational  psychology,  pure  and  simple, 
without  further  qualification.  Let  us  defend  the  dead, 
who  cannot  defend  themselves  ! 

I  fancy  it  is  sufficiently  evident  that  the  scientific  law 
of  physical  evolution  has  little  enough  to  do  with  the 
determination  of  problems  such  as  we  have  been  con- 
sidering. A  process  which  goes  on,  if  at  all,  only  within 
the  sphere  of  phenomena,  a  law  which  in  its  confessed 
intention  is  but  a  descriptive  summing  up  of  the  historical 
process  of  phenomena,  has  obviously  nothing  to  do  with 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  361 

their  ontological  explanation,  or  with  the  solution  of  any 
other  specifically  philosophical  problem,  i.e.  of  any  prob- 
lem of  ultimate  truth  or  reality.  I  repeat  that  it  is  not 
the  "philosophy  of  evolution"  (in  which  there  is  no  phi- 
losophy), but  the  old  sensational  theory  of  knowledge 
which  has  prevailed  in  British  thought  since  Bacon's 
time,  which  determines  Mr.  Spencer's  "philosophical" 
conclusions  (negations).  The  conclusions  are  such,  in 
quality,  as  have  always  followed,  in  ancient  as  well  as 
modern  times,  from  that  exclusive  premise.  But  some  of 
them,  relating  to  human  mind  and  morals,  he  attempts, 
as  we  shall  presently  see,  to  affiliate  in  a  peculiarly  inti- 
mate, though  illusory,  manner  upon  the  law  of  evolution. 
His  procedure  here,  however,  is  but  part  and  parcel  of  the 
common  procedure  of  sensational  psychology  foisted  into 
the  alleged  place  of  philosophy.  The  essential  is  con- 
founded, as  far  as  possible,  with  the  apparent,  the  active 
cause  with  the  condition  and  law  of  order,  the  agent  and 
the  end  of  action  with  the  means,  and  the  former  is 
assumed  in  each  case  to  be  explained  when  the  scientific 
history  of  the  latter  has  been  made  experimentally,  or 
with  hypothetical  probability,  complete.  The  result  is 
peculiarly  exasperating,  unsatisfying  and  confusing,  espe- 
cially to  a  learner  unschooled  in  philosophic  thought, 
when  this  method  is  employed  to  "account  for"  man  and 
morality.  For  in  man  the  essential  and  the  phenomenal, 
cause  and  law  of  action,  agent  and  instrument  exist  in 
closest  relationship,  and  yet  in  most  obvious  distinction. 
Man  knows  that  he  has  an  animal  (phenomenal)  side  to 
his  nature,  but  that  he  is  spiritual,  that  he  wears  a  dress 
of  involuntary  habit  ("association"),  but  that  his  inward 
and  essential  substance  (if  he  have  any)  is  self-determined, 
16 


362  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

ideal  character,  that  law  and  mechanical  condition  are 
instrnmeuts  in  his  possession,  but  that  he  himself  is  a 
potent  agent,  in  short,  that  what  appears  about  him  is 
but  a  faint  and  deceptive  indication,  and  is  no  part  at  all, 
of  what  he,  as  man,  characteristically  and  essentially  is. 
Now,  when  he  is  treated  to  an  analytic  account  of  the 
former,  as  though  that  were  the  essential  thing,  while  the 
latter  is  either  not  recognized,  or,  if  recognized,  is  reduced 
to  such  an  imperceptible  minimum  that  the  attempt  may 
be  plausibly  made  to  persuade  him  that  it  is  of  no  practical 
importance,  or  else,  finally,  while  recognized  is  declared 
to  be  so  absolutely  unknowable  that  (however  important 
in  se)  he  cannot  permit  himself  to  shape  his  notions  con- 
cerning human  life  and  duty  and  privilege  with  any 
reference  to  it,  it  is  no  wonder  that  man  is  puzzled,  and 
cries  out  in  answer  to  the  inquiry  after  his  own  identity, 
with  the  amazed  "little  market-woman,"  celebrated  in 
nursery  rhyme,  "Lawk-a-mercy  on  me!  this  is  none  of 
I ! "  If  the  "  highest  truth  "  (so  much  "  in  advance  of  the 
time"!)  be  that  essential  manhood  is  essentially  unknow- 
able, and  hence  practically  to  be  left  out  of  the  account, 
while  we  accept  in  its  place,  and  devote  ourselves  to  the 
cultivation  of,  an  apparent  man  of  straw,  we  will  submit, 
"like  little  men,"  to  be  told  this,  to  be  disabused  of  our 
unscientific  error,  and  may  perhaps  even  be  induced  to 
imitate  our  advanced  leaders  in  posturing  before  our 
fellow-men  as  noble,  devoutly  resigned,  spiritual  martyrs 
to  that  letter  of  "truth"  which  kills  our  spirits.  But  we 
shall  hold  convicted  of  error  that  saying,  not  less  of  all 
affirmative  philosophy  than  of  religion,  "The  truth  shall 
make  you  free." 

I  am  not  caricaturing  Mr.  Spencer's  doctrine.    I  am 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  363 

simply  stating  what  he  holds  as  matter  of  positive 
theoretic  knowledge,  however  much  he  may,  to  his  honor 
and  to  the  honor  of  living  truth  and  reality,  as  embodied 
in  man,  by  repeated  inadvertences,  or  even  by  verbal 
admissions  and  assertions,  convict  himself  of  inability 
faithfully  to  restrict  himself  to  it. 

Mr.  Spencer  holds  that  man  is  known  to  himself  and 
can  scientifically,  and  hence,  in  agreement  with  the  pre- 
supposed theory  of  knowledge,  legitimately,  regard  and 
study  himself  only  as  a  congeries  of  sensuous,  physio- 
logically determined  states  of  consciousness.  His  Psy- 
chology is  a  hypothetical  history  of  the  evolution  of 
such  consciousness,  in  terms  of  the  redistribution  of 
matter  and  motion  —  more  especially  of  the  matter  and 
motion  of  the  nervous  system.  That  he,  Mr.  Spencer, 
has,  individually,  a  nervous  system,  is  referred  to  as  a 
"conclusion"  which  he  has  reached  (through  his  dem- 
onstration of  "Transfigured  Eealism"?)  and  which,  it 
is  "congruous  with  facts"  to  assume,  holds  good  con- 
cerning other  similar  beings,  whom,  again,  it  is  also 
congruous  with  facts  to  suppose  as  existing.  Nervous 
aflFections  are  molecular  changes  resulting  from  the  tend- 
ency of  motion  to  follow  the  line  of  least  resistance.  Of 
these  affections,  states  of  consciousness  are  believed  to 
be  the  obverse,  or  "inner  face."  (This  belief  is  indeed 
stated  to  be  of  "remotely  inferential  character,"  but  on 
its  validity  [which,  as  we  shall  see,  need  not  be  ques- 
tioned] the  whole  fabric  of  Mr.  Spencer's  psychology 
depends.  It  marks  the  whole  scope  and  the  proper 
ontological  limit  of  his,  and  of  all  other  "physiological" 
psychology.)  The  fundamental  law  of  nervous  action  is 
declared  to  be  the  fundamental  law  of  intelligence.    The 


364  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

physical  evolution  of  the  nervous  system  is,  by  virtue  of 
the  "double  face"  of  the  latter,  at  once  also  the  evolution 
of  "mind,"  or  "what  we  call  knowing."  Mind  has  in- 
deed a  "nature,"  but  this  nature  is  "nervous  organiza- 
tion." And,  this  last  allegation  being  admitted,  it  fol- 
lows that  "  if  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  true,  the  in- 
evitable implication  is  that  Mind  can  be  understood 
only  by  observing  how  Mind  is  evolved."  So  here  we 
are  landed  upon  the  alleged  rock  of  principle,  upon  which 
Mr.  Spencer's  psychology,  or  explanation  of  "mind,"  is 
founded,  and  this  rock  is  evolution. 

But  we  are  not  brought  face  to  face  with  a  new  prin- 
ciple in  kind,  as  compared  with  the  "principles"  of 
explanation  employed  in  the  earlier  sensational  or  "asso- 
ciational"  psychologies  of  Hartley,  the  two  Mills,  Bain, 
et  at  In  the  one  case,  as  in  the  others,  it  is  only  the 
sensible  or  felt  phenome^ia  of  mind  which  there  is  any 
pretension  of  "explaining,"  for  only  such  phenomena 
are  admitted  to  be  accessible  to  knowledge.  In  either 
case,  by  a  strict  construction,  it  is  not  the  nature  of  mind, 
as  a  dynamic  principle  which  effectuates  or  is  active 
underneath  phenomena,  which  is  clad  in  them  as  in  a 
transparent  garment,  and  to  the  rational,  vital  nature 
of  whose  activities  they  point  and  bear  both  direct  and 
indirect  witness  —  it  is  not  this  which  is  investigated. 
The  whole  object  of  endeavor  (so  far  as  this  endeavor  is 
strictly  scientific,  and  it  claims  to  be  nothing  else)  is 
accurately  to  recognize  the  phenomena  as  given  matters- 
of-sensible-fact,  and  to  demonstrate  the  "  law "  or  rule 
of  order  which  is  observed  to  hold  good  concerning  their 
varied  coexistences  and  sequences.  "Explanation,"  in 
this  order  of  inquiry,  means  ascertaining  and  naming 


HERBERT  SPEifCER.  365 

the  rule  of  coexistence  or  sequence,  which  a  given  phe- 
nomenon or  class  of  phenomena  observably  illustrates. 
The  subordinate  "laws"  of  mental  phenomena,  which 
are  recognized  and  thus  employed  in  "  explanation "  by 
Mr.  Spencer,  are  of  the  same  kind,  and  are  the  same  in 
substance,  as  those  employed  by  his  British  predecessors 
and  contemporaries  (laws  of  "  association  ").  His  pecu- 
liarity is  that  he  seeks,  in  the  true  scientific  spirit,  to 
make  them  all  appear  as  subordinate  cases  or  modifica- 
tions of  the  comprehensive  phenomenal  law  of  evolution. 

This  is  a  thoroughly  legitimate  work,  in  which  Mr. 
Spencer  has  accomplished  much.  There  is  such  a  thing 
as  mental  science,  just  as  there  is  also  (though  Mr. 
Spencer,  in  common  with  the  school  from  which  he 
springs,  denies  this)  a  mental  jjhilosophy.  As  above  in- 
timated, in  mind  the  phenomenal  and  the  real,  state 
and  activity,  motion  and  power,  the  shadow  and  the 
substance  of  soul,  coexist,  and  that,  too,  in  the  closest 
apparent  relationship.  The  former  is  the  subject  of 
historical,  descriptive,  analytical  science;  the  latter  is 
at  once  a  subject  and  the  universal  organ  of  philosophy, 
or  of  substantive  cognition,  and  not  merely  of  phenomenal 
recognition.  The  only  danger  is  that  the  two  orders 
and  subjects  of  inquiry  may  be  confounded  —  that  either 
science  or  philosophy  may,  uncritically,  take  its  own 
peculiar  explanations  to  be,  in  the  one  case,  final,  or,  in 
the  other,  exhaustive.  This  danger  is  iUustrated  in  the 
case  of  all  the  members  of  the  British  school  of  psy- 
chology, and  by  none  more  signally  than  by  Mr.  Spencer. 

Mr.  Spencer  does  indeed  issue,  in  his  Psychology,  his 
usual  caveat  against  the  pretense  that  the  investigations 
in  progress  are  to  reach  the  "  substance  of  Mind."    And 


366  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

the  grounds  on  which  he  does  this  are  pecnliar,  and  of  a 
piece  with  those  which  are  employed  by  him  to  establish 
the  universal  incognoscibility  of  absolute  or  true  reality. 
He  does  not  place  himself  on  the  common-sense,  obvious 
ground  that  one  thing  is  not  another  ;  that  the  scientific 
ascertainment  of  the  order  of  static  appearances  is  not 
identical  with  the  philosopliical  investigation  and  cogni- 
tion of  the  dynamic  principle  of  reality,  and  that  the  pre- 
suppositions and  method  of  science  are  not  necessarily 
those  which  are  legitimately  peculiar  to  philosophy.  What- 
ever is  not  cognizable  through  the  investigation  of  phe- 
nomena by  the  peculiar  method  and  with  the  peculiar  and 
generally  recognized  limitations  of  physical  science,  is 
arbitrarily  held  to  be,  for  this  reason,  absolutely  unknow- 
able. All  arguments  founded  on  such  a  basis  of  pure 
assumption  are  necessarily  sophistical.  They  may  perplex 
a  learner,  or  induce  the  valueless  assent  of  the  thoughtless, 
but  cannot  convince  the  thoughtful.  The  important  thing 
to  notice  is,  that  arguments  thus  founded  assimilate  in 
imagination  that,  wliose  incognoscibility  is  to  be  demon- 
strated, to  those  sensible  conceptions  which  confessedly  are 
insufficient  to  express  it,  being  indeed  wholly  disparate  to 
it.  In  order  to  disprove  sul)stance,  we  endeavor  to  think 
of  it  as  shadow !  The  natural  result  of  accustoming  one's 
self  to  such  an  irrational  endeavor,  is  a  constant  tendency 
to  repeat  it  and  finally  to  imagine  or  practically  to  proceed 
as  if  the  endeavor  were  both  legitimate  and  successful. 
This  result  I  find  illustrated  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Spencer 
(in  common  with  so  many  other  philosophically  unin- 
structed  or  ungifted  men  of  pure  science).  Its  crown- 
ing and  commanding  illustration  is  found  in  those  de- 
liverances of  his  whicii   relate,  either  professedly  or  by 


HERBERT   SPEIS^CER.  367 

implication  (as  iu  his  psychology  of  the  "  Will "),  to  eth- 
ical topics.  This  is  natural,  for  it  is  peculiar  to  ethical 
philosophy  that  we  are  concerned  in  it  with  the  true  and 
characteristic,  or  ultimate,  nature  of  man  as  man.  We 
shall  contemplate  this  presently. 

Mind,  I  have  said,  is  a  reality,  as  well  as  a  bundle  of 
phenomena,  though  only  the  latter  are  presented  in  static, 
sensitive,  imaginative,  consciousness,  and  so  scientifically 
"  known."  As  a  reality  it  is  dynamic,  synthetic,  vital,  and 
knows  itself  in  active  self-consciousness.  And  tlius  it  is 
implicitly  or  explicitly  known  to  every  man.  We  have 
seen  how  the  knowledge  of  it  forced  itself,  as  an  inerad- 
icable "  belief,"  upon  John  Stuart  Mill,  although,  since  it 
found  no  place  in  scientific  (static,  sensitive)  conscious- 
ness, it  was  for  him,  not  a  thing  of  light,  but  of  darkness, 
not  of  "  knowledge,"  but  of  ignorance,  described  (in  the 
use  of  words  which,  nevertheless,  well  implied  its  active, 
synthetic,  and  hence  its  really,  vitally,  substantively  know- 
able  nature)  as  an  "  inexplicable  tie,''''  ox  "  bond  of  some 
sort."  Mr.  Spencer — notwithstanding  his  prevalent  tend- 
ency to  think  of  mind  as  a  "  substance,"  of  which  "  we 
cannot  think  .  .  .  save  in  terms  that  imply  material  prop- 
erties," and  as  being  such  a  "cause"  as  can  be  "thought 
of"  (sensibly  imaged)  only  in  the  form,  not  of  power,  but 
of  sensible  succession  —  has  also  a  clear  enough  notion  of 
mind  as  of  some  thing  "  which  holds  impressions  and 
ideas  together,"  a  "principle  of  continuity,"  or,  in  other 
words  of  personal  identity,  a  "self."  Tliis  is  an  intelligi- 
ble notion,  corresponding  to  experienced,  vital  reality,  but 
it  is  not  an  image  of  sensible  consciousness,  not  a  pure, 
physically  conditioned  "  feeling"  or  "  state  of  conscious- 
ness," and  hence,  according  to  the  arbitrary  assumption 


368  BKITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

of  sensational  psychology,  not  an  object  of  "reason "(I) 
or  "  knowledge."  This  is  (incompletely  stated)  what  the 
"  ego "  is,  and  it  is  a  very  clear  object  of  self-conscious 
knowledge;  otherwise  how  should  we  have  a  conception 
of  it,  how  should  we  know  that  we  "believed"  in  it? 
And  yet,  although,  in  Mr.  Spencer's  words,  "  belief  in  the 
reality  of  self  is,  indeed,  a  belief  which  no  hypothesis 
enables  us  to  escape,"  when  we  have  this  belief  we  do 
not  know  in  what  we  are  believing.  The  "  reality  of  self" 
is  unknowable  (because  not  a  sensible  phenomenon,  not 
pictured  in  sensitive  consciousness,  like  a  tree  or  a  stone), 
and  belief  in  it  is  a  "belief  admitting  of  no  justification 
by  reason  "  (and  so,  then,. the  belief  in  the  "  Unknowable  " 
universally  admits  of  no  such  justification !  all  that  which 
we  hold  as  most  vitally  and  absolutely  true,  because  neces- 
sary in  consistent  thought,  and  founded  in  the  most  vital, 
ever-present  experience,  we  hold,  in  spite  of  "  reason,"  by 
practical,  impenetrable,  brute  and  irrational,  necessity! 
Surely  this  is  not  "free  thought,"  but  "free  thoughtless- 
ness," not  the  empire  of  reason,  but  the  self-confessed 
"imbecility"  of  irrationality!).  This  "belief,"  which 
would  furnish  (as  far  as  it  goes)  an  admirable  working 
hypothesis  for  the  construction  of  a  rational,  real  (ultra- 
phenomenal)  psychology,  because  so  necessarily  and  im- 
mediately "given "in  practical,  vital  experience,  that  "no 
hypothesis  enables  us  to  escape"  it,  should,  if  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's purpose  were  purely  scientific,  simply  be  ignored,  but 
not,  on  irrelevant  grounds,  declared  unjustifiable;  and 
then  he  might,  in  the  spirit  of  a  purely  "scientific"  de- 
scriptive psychologist,  go  on  to  sliow  that  the  sensible 
phenomena  of  consciousness,  in  their  historic  succession, 
occur  in  an  order,  or  according  to  a  complex  system  of 


HEEBERT   SPENCER.  369 

"  laws  "  or  rules  of  order,  which  may  be  summed  up  under 
the  word,  or  "  law  "  of.  Evolution.  But,  no  !  the  phe- 
nomenal must  become,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  the 
real,  and  the  scientific  account  (phenomenal  description) 
of  the  former  must  be  (arbitrarily)  held  to  exclude  the 
possibility  of  a  true  cognition  of  the  latter.  All  deduc- 
tions from  the  "necessary"  belief  in  self,  all  other  "be- 
liefs "  (in  reality,  cognitions)  which  are  inextricably  bound 
up  with  it,  must  be  held  to  be  illusory ;  among  others,  the 
"illusion"  respecting  the  "freedom  of  the  Will,"  which 
"consists  in  supposing  [agreeably  to  'a  belief  which  no 
hypothesis  enables  us  to  escape'!]  that  at  each  moment 
the  ego  is  something  more  than  the  aggregate  of  feelings 
and  ideas,  actual  and  nascent,  which  then  exists,"  namely, 
that  it  is  a  self,  a  principle  of  continuity  or  identity,  pos- 
sessing at  least  poiver  enough  to  "  hold  together  impres- 
sions and  ideas."  All  this  is  gratuitous,  extra-scientific 
absurdity,  contradiction  and  dogmatism. 

Mr.  Spencer's  method,  then,  is  verbally  to  recognize 
the  real  along  with  the  phenomenal,  and  then  either  to 
declare  the  former  unknowable,  or  the  belief  in  it  decep- 
tive, and  then  (again)  to  persuade  himself  that  after  all, 
in  ascertaining  (or  hypothetically  constructing)  the  law 
or  order  of  the  phenomenal,  he  has  practically  accounted 
(as  it  regards  mind  and  morals)  for  the  real.  This  con- 
fusion of  a  mind  bred  in  the  prejudices  and  assumptions 
of  a  sensational  psychology  seeking  to  overleap  itself — 
this,  and  not  the  nature  of  the  subject-matter  of  discus- 
sion itself,  is  the  source  of  all  Mr.  Spencer's  conspicuous 
ineptitudes  and  failures  in  psychology.  These  have  been 
so  often  pointed  out  that,  even  did  our  space  permit,  it 
were  needless  to  catalogue  and  demonstrate  them  in  detail 


370  BRITISH   THOUGHT  AND   THINKEES. 

anew.  The  list  would  be  as  long  as  the  number  of  mental 
functions  which  are  verbally  treated  of  in  his  psychology. 
I  limit  myself  to  the  following  observations. 

What  real  or  rational  psychology  has  to  treat  of  is 
what  I  have  just  termed,  deliberately,  mental  fujidions. 
The  names  of  these  functions  are  many,  as,  consciousness, 
memory,  intelligence,  reason,  will.  All  these,  and  others, 
are  active  functions  of  mind.  They  are  all  nominally 
discussed  by  Mr.  Spencer,  but  only  nominally;  for  he  puts 
in  the  place  of  xr^xAsiX  functions  "mental  states,"  which 
latter  are  for  him  not  functions  of  mind,  but  of  the 
nervous  system. 

Concerning  the  facts  of  consciousness,  as  such,  Mr. 
Spencer  declares  that  they  are  "absolutely  without  any 
perceptible  or  conceivable  community  of  nature  with  the 
facts"  of  the  nervous  system.  They  are  "truths  of  which 
the  very  elements  are  unknown  to  pliysical  science."  A 
"unit  of  feeling  has  nothing  in  common  with  a  unit  of 
motion"  (which  is  the  unit  of  all  physical,  and  so,  in 
particular,  of  all  nervous  processes),  and  "  no  effort  ena- 
bles us  to  assimilate  them."  And  if  sucli  assimilation 
were  possible,  we  should  be  warranted,  by  occasional  re- 
flections of  our  author,  in  supposing  that  it  is  the  phys- 
ical which  must  be  assimilated  to  the  psychical,  rather 
than  the  contrary,  since  physical  ])henomena  (we  are  re- 
minded) are  known  only  in  and  through,  or  as  modes  of, 
consciousness.  While  we  are  led  "by  a  very  indirect  series 
of  inferences  to  the  belief  tluit  mind  and  nervous  action 
are  the  subjective  and  objective  faces  of  the  same  thing, 
we  remain  utterly  incai)able  of  seeing,  and  even  of  im- 
agining, how  the  two  are  related.  Mind  still  continues  to 
us  a  something  without  any  kinship  to  other  things,"  etc. 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  371 

And  yet  the  case  is  not  altogether  so  desperate ;  for  "  we 
have  good  reason  to  conclude  that  at  the  particular  place 
in  a  superior  nervous  center  where,  in  some  mysterious 
way,  an  objective  change  or  nervous  action  causes  a  sub- 
jective change  or  feeling,  there  exists  a  quantitative  equiv- 
alence between  the  two."  So  that,  instead  of  the  absence 
of  "any  perceptible  or  conceivable  community  of  nature  " 
between  "mind"  and  nervous  action,  there  is  evidence, 
suflBcient  to  compel  rational  assent,  that  they  are  both 
subject  to  quantitative  measurement,  and  that  nervous 
action  "causes"  {i.e.  of  course,  is  the  physical  cause  of) 
mental  states. 

I  need  not  stop  to  comment  at  length  upon  the  con- 
fusion in  the  use  of  the  terms  "objective"  and  "subject- 
ive," whicli  is  obvious  everywliere  in  Mr.  Spencer's  "phi- 
losophy," and  is  implied,  in  particular,  in  the  foregoing 
extracts.  The  objective,  speaking  absolutely,  is  for  Mr. 
Spencer  the  unknowable;  all  that  is  known  to  us,  be  this 
physical  or  psychical,  motion  or  conscious  feeling,  is 
subjective  and,  as  such,  purely  phenomenal.  From  this 
point  of  view  there  is  absolute  community,  and  not  con- 
trast, between  the  physical  and  the  psycliical.  But  within 
the  sphere  of  the  subjective  or  phenomenal  itself,  Mr. 
Spencer  makes  (in  accordance  with  popular  pliraseology) 
a  new  distinction  of  subject  and  object,  which  may  have 
its  measure  of  practical,  scientific  convenience,  but  which 
has  no  ontological  significance.  (It  is  the  confusion  of 
tliis  phenomenal  distinction  with  the  before-mentioned 
absolute  one,  which  lends  to  the  so-called  problem  con-" 
cerning  the  existence  of  the  external  world  its  transcend- 
ent importance  and  ignis  fat aus  brilliancy  for  the  sub- 
jective "idealists"  mentioned  by  Spencer,  as  well  as  for 


372  BRITISH   THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

Spencer  himself.)  According  to  this  second  distinction, 
the  objective  is  the  physical,  or  "  matter  and  motion," 
while  the  subjective  is  consciousness.  To  this  distinction, 
now,  having  only  a  relative  validity,  Mr.  Spencer  practi- 
cally attributes  an  absolute  character.  He  does  this, 
namely,  in  as  far  as  he  surreptitiously  invests  the  object- 
ive in  this  second  sense  (matter,  motion,  nervous  system) 
with  the  causative,  determining  power  which  he  else- 
where more  accurately  restricts  to  the  region  of  the  un- 
knowable. The  argument  is,  in  effect,  this:  The  subject- 
ive in  the  second  sense  is  the  constant  concomitant  of 
the  objective  in  the  second  sense  (this  premise  is  unques- 
tionably correct) ;  hence,  the  objective  in  the  second  sense 
(more  especially  nervous  system)  is  to  the  subjective  in 
the  second  sense  (conscious  states)  what  the  objective  in 
the  first  sense  (or,  considered  absolutely,  the  unknowable, 
but  alone  powerful,  real)  is  to  the  subjective  in  the  second 
sense  (the  powerless  phenomenal,  which  includes  hoth 
nervons  system  and  conscious  states).  This  confusion  is 
the  result  of  Mr.  Spencer's  failure  to  keep  in  mind  the 
distinction  between  real  and  phenomenal  (or  scientific) 
causation.  The  latter  is  not,  strictly  speaking,  causation 
at  all,  but  only  regular  coexistence  or  sequence.  In  this 
non-literal  sense  of  the  term  it  is  perfectly  correct  to  say 
that  nervous  action  is  the  "cause"  of  sensibly  conscious 
states.  But  all  that  this  means  is  that  one  set  of  phe- 
nomena (popuhirly,  but  not  absolutely,  termed  objective) 
occurs  in  regular  correspondence  with  another  set  of  phe- 
nomena (which,  absolutely  considered,  are  just  as  object- 
ive, or,  rather,  just  as  little  objective,  as  the  former).  -Mr. 
Spencer,  then,  technically, —  i.e.  restricting  the  meaning 
of  the  term  "cause"  to  its  scientific  significance, —  is  in 


HERBEET   SPENCER.  373 

the  right  as  far  as  he  really  (not  ostensibly)  goes.  But 
he  is  ill  the  right  only  because  all  that  which  he  explains 
of  consciousness  {i.e.  brings  under  descriptive  "law")  is 
its  phenomenal,  non-characteristic  side  (not  that  side 
by  virtue  of  which  it  is  real  mind,  dynamic,  synthetic, 
penetrative,  comprehensive,  "looking  before  and  after"). 
And  such  explanation,  again,  he  is  enabled  to  offer  only 
because  nervous  action  and  phenomenal  conscious  state 
are  not  without  "conceivable  community  of  nature,"  but, 
on  the  contrary,  of  identical  nature,  being  both,  while  co- 
ordinate, and  so  distinct,  within  the  sphere  of  the  true 
"subjective"  or  phenomenal  realm,  yet  identical,  inas- 
much as  they  are  nothing  but  coordinate  parts  of  the 
same  realm.  That  which  is  antithetically  opposed,  not 
only  to  nervous  action,  but  also  to  sensitive  or  aflfectional 
consciousness  (on  its  passive,  purely  phenomenal  side),  as 
the  real  to  the  apparent,  is  mind  in  its  intelligible,  active 
functions,  or,  in  other  words,  mind  as  such.  This,  I  re- 
peat, Mr.  Spencer  only  verbally  recognizes;  in  his  reputed 
"explanations"  of  it,  he  eviscerates  it,  and  contemplates 
only  its  phenomenal  hull.  Not  content  with  the  perfectly 
scientific  endeavor  to  exhibit  this  hull,  as  subsisting  in 
analogues  or  incidents  of  the  processes  summed  up  under 
the  phrase  "redistribution  of  matter  and  motion,"  he 
proceeds,  practically,  as  if  the  hull  were  the  kernel,  and 
as  if  the  statement  of  the  "law"  of  the  former  were  an 
exhibition  of  the  vital  substance  or  reality  of  the  latter. 
Of  course  he  thus  contradicts  in  tendency  his  (false) 
demonstration  of  the  unknowableness  of  reality,  and 
illustrates  its  strict  theoretic  truth  as  regards  himself  (or 
any  other  purely  sensational  psychologist).     The  real  is 


374  BRITISH  THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

known  to  him  in  name,  and  he  seeks  to  explain  it  by  re- 
ducing it  under  the  law  and  nature  of  the  phenomenal. 

Consciousness,  we  are  told,  is  impossible  without 
change  of  conscious  state,  and  the  concomitant  analogue 
of  such  change  is  found  in  the  molecular  oscillations 
and  the  transmissions  of  motion  which  go  on  in  the 
nervous  system.  "In  the  lowest  conceivable  type  of 
consciousness  —  that  produced  by  the  alternation  of  two 
[psychical]  states  —  there  are  involved  the  relations  con- 
stituting the  forms  of  all  thought.  And  such  an  alter- 
nation of  two  [physical]  states  is  just  that  which  occurs 
in  the  ganglion  connected  with  one  of  these  rhythmically- 
moving  organs."  But  the  "relations  constituting  the 
forms  of  all  thought,"  as  Mr.  Spencer  tires  not  of  re- 
marking, are  summed  up  in  the  terms  "  likeness  and 
unlikeness."  Let  us  admit  this.  But  likeness  and  un- 
likeness  are  intelligible,  not  sensible,  relations,  the  ap- 
prehension of  which  implies  a  characteristic  mental 
f^mction.  This  is  a  synthetic  activity,  which  implies  the 
bringing  together  of  more  than  one  "  state "  under  the 
focus  of  a  single  view,  or,  in  other  words,  comparison  and 
identification  or,  as  the  case  may  be,  discrimination.  The 
"alternation  of  two  states"  of  sensible  consciousness  nu\y 
illustrate  and  serve  to  keep  before  the  mind  the  terms 
of  comparison,  and  the  alternation  of  two  states  of 
"rhythmical"  nervous  motion  may  serve  "in  some  mys- 
terious way"  to  "cause"  the  conscious  states,  but  the 
recoynition  of  the  likeness  or  unlikeness  of  the  latter  is 
an  ideal,  synthetic  act,  which,  by  Mr.  Spencer's  con- 
fession, is  not  identical  with  either  of  the  "states"  ("no 
consciousness  without  change  of  state,"  hence  no  con- 
sciousness of  or  in  a  single  state),  and  hence  not  ideu- 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  375 

tical  with  both.  But  Mr.  Spencer  proceeds  as  if  the  con- 
trary were  true,  and  seeks  by  a  thoroughly  confusing 
and  self-contradictory  analysis  to  reduce  likeness  and 
unlikeness  (which  are  qualitative  relations),  through  a 
passing  identification  of  them  with  the  quantitative  re- 
lations of  "equality"  and  "inequality,"  to  mere  varieties 
of  alternate,  local  change,  or  modes  of  motion.  The 
terms  of  comparison  are  to  be  identified  with  the  act  of 
comparison,  the  analytic  condition  with  the  synthetic 
cause.  This  is  precisely  the  method  of  the  elder  and 
younger  Mill,  and  of  all  other  purely  sensational  psy- 
chologists. But  it  does  not  recognize  or  explain,  it 
simply  explains  away,  the  first  or  most  elementary  char- 
acteristic of  7'eal  consciousness. 

Now,  it  is  just  such  a  reduction  of  synthetic,  real  act, 
to  analytic,  phenomenal  state,  which  Mr.  Spencer  at- 
tempts throughout  his  psychology.  Knowledge,  we  are 
told,  is  of  relations,  the  discernment  of  which  is  the 
peculiar  function  of  intellect.  The  "immediate  terms, 
or  the  ultimate  components  of  the  terms,  between  whicli 
relations  are  established  in  every  cognition,"  are  "epi- 
peripheral  feelings,  real  or  ideal."  But  now,  as  before, 
in  the  particular  case  of  the  relations  of  likeness  and 
unlikeness,  so  in  the  case  of  relations  universally,  Mr. 
Spencer  (yielding  to  the  like  blinding  prepossession  with 
his  forerunners, —  tiie  elder  Mill,  for  special  example,) 
seeks  to  identify  relation,  in  nature,  with  its  terms. 
These  terms  are  alleged  "feelings."  The  establishment 
or  recognition  of  a  relation  between  them  is  an  ideal, 
synthetic  act,  which  contemplates  both  terms,  and  is 
identical  in  nature  with  neither.  Not  so  says  Mr. 
Spencer.    A  feeling  is   "any  portion   of  consciousness 


376  BBITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

which  occupies  a  place  [sic]  suflBciently  large  to  give  it 
a  perceivable  individuality,"  etc.  A  relation  is  "char- 
acterized by  occupying  no  appreciable  part  of  conscious- 
ness." A  feeling  is  "suspected"  and  "scientifically" 
held  to  be  a  compound  of  nervous  shocks.  A  single 
nervous  shock  is  imperceptible  and  hence  "constitutes" 
no  feeling.  "Each  relational  feeling  may  in  fact  be  re- 
garded as  one  of  those  nervous  shocks  which  we  suspect 
to  be  the  units  of  composition  of  feeling."  So  then  "  in- 
tellectual "  relation  is  in  reality  "  relational  feeling,"  but 
not  perceptible.  It  occupies  "  no  appreciable  part  of 
consciousness."  It  is  one  of  those  nervous  shocks  which 
are  singly  imperceptible  and  must  be  compounded 
in  order  to  give  true  feeling.  And  so,  then,  the  "rela- 
tional elem.ent"  of  knowledge,  which  is  rightly  held  by 
Mr.  Spencer  to  be  the  fundamental  and  characteristic 
one  and  the  true  object  of  intelligence,  is  not  "  appreci- 
able in  consciousness,"  is  not  "given"  for  recognition, 
and  so  is  not  known  at  all;  and  so  there  is  no  knowl- 
edge!—  It  is  true,  the  "relational  element,"  as  such,  is 
not  given  in  sensible,  static  consciousness,  but  in  rational, 
dynamic  self-consciousness,  for  it  is  a  characteristically 
\dea\  function;  it  is  intelligible,  and  not  sensible.  But 
Mr.  Spencer,  having  an  eye  to  recognize  only  the  fact 
of  the  intelligible,  but  not  its  substance,  seeks  to  reduce 
it  to  the  sensible,  and  ends  by  making  it  psychologically 
less  than  that,  namely,  nothing.  (Spencer's  account  of  tlie 
"relational  element"  in  knowledge  might  be  turned  about 
and  its  absurdity  exhibited  from  other  points  of  view, 
did  space  permit  or  the  occasion  require  it.) 

It  is  in  a  similar  manner  that  memory,  prevision,  in- 
ference, reason  and  volition  are  "explained."    The  some- 


HEKBERT   SPENCER.  377 

thing  "which  holds  together  impressions  and  ideas"  (the 
synthetic  power),  which  Mr.  Spencer  had  recognized, 
through  a  necessary  but  (for  him)  inscrutable  "belief,"  as 
the  reality  of  mind,  disappears  here,  as  well  as  elsewhere, 
under  a  dissolving  analysis  which  we  are  practically  re- 
quired to  regard  as  exhaustive.  The  whole  result  is  to  set 
before  us,  in  the  way  partly  of  true  and  partly  of  hypo- 
thetical description,  what  mind  is  felt  to  be  (in  the  sen- 
suous sense  of  this  term  as  it  is  employed  in  sensational 
psychology),  and  not  what  it  is  intelligibly  Icnoion  to  be. 
We  have,  according  to  the  originally  professed  intention, 
an  account  of  certain  appearances  only.  This  is  the  per- 
fectly scientific  work  which  pure  physiological  psychology 
is  still  prosecuting  with  success,  and  were,  on  Spencer's 
part,  all  very  well,  if  a  lack  of  clear  philosophical  insight 
did  not  lead  him  to  palm  off  his  work  upon  himself,  and 
to  seek  to  palm  it  off  upon  others,  as  a  complete  account 
of  man  in  his  practical  and  true  reality.  We  a^'e  treated 
to  a  ^^ psycliologie  sans  chne" — to  a  mass  of  real  or  hypo- 
thetical statistics  concerning  the  phenomena,  in  connec- 
tion with  which  mind  reveals  its  activity,  and  are  vainly 
invited  to  contemplate  in  this  ourselves,  according  to  our 
final  reality.  To  ask  for  more  is  to  yield  to  an  "ancient 
or  medieval  bias,"  and  to  be  guilty  of  anthropomorphism! 
One  would  say  that  our  conception  of  man  cannot  well 
be  too  anthropomorphic. 

This  account  of  Mr.  Spencer's  doctrine  is  not  exagger- 
ated, for,  in  addition  to  the  evidence  of  its  correctness 
furnished  on  nearly  every  page  of  the  "Principles  of 
Psychology,"  the  crowning  proof  is  furnished  in  the  na- 
ture of  Mr.  Spencer's  ethical  conceptions.  These  (which 
I  must  not  now  discuss  in  exhaustive  detail)  rest  on  a 
16* 


378  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

basis  specially  prepared  in  the  "Psychology,"  though 
(professedly)  generally  founded,  like  the  views  expressed 
in  all  of  Mr.  Spencer's  works,  on  the  doctrine  or  law  of 
evolution. 

That  which  characteristically  marks  Mr.  Spencer's 
attitude  in  treating  of  man  as  a  moral  being  is  the  same 
thing  which  we  have  observed  in  regarding  his  treatment 
of  man  as  "mind";  it  is  the  pertinacious  determination 
to  put  the  "outward  appearance"  in  the  place  of  the 
"heart,"  to  substitute  the  scientific  history  of  the  chang- 
ing phenomenal  for  the  philosophic  recognition  and 
demonstration  of  the  real,  in  its  eternal  and  unchanging 
power  and  truth,  to  install  the  natural  man  in  the  place 
of  the  spiritual  man,  the  apparent  self  in  the  place  of 
the  true  self.  Ideal  truth  is  to  be  assimilated  to  sensible 
"fact" — with  the  same  result,  in  kind,  of  which  we  have 
caught  a  broad  glimpse  in  the  "  Psychology,"  namely,  that 
the  real,  synthetic,  vital,  while  nominally  "explained" 
{i.e.  hypothetically  described)  in  terms  of  the  sensible,  in 
reality  is  analyzed  away,  and  becomes  less  than  nought. 
The  specifically  human  is  interpreted  (?)  in  terms  of  the 
sub-human.  The  instrument  and  concomitant  condition 
becomes  the  agent.  The  limitation  becomes,  not  "wings 
and  means,"  but  the  thing  limited.  The  law  of  nervous 
action  is  identified  with  the  law  of  all  morality  (as,  pre- 
viously, with  the  law  of  all  intelligence).  Pleasure  and 
pain,  the  sensitive  concomitants  and  more  or  less  remote 
signs  of  essential  good  and  evil,  are  substituted  for  good 
and  evil  themselves.  Thus  apparent  good  and  evil  alone 
are  recognized,  and  these  are  measured  by  reference  to 
apparent  pleasure  and  pain,  not  true  pleasure  and  pain 
by  reference  to  absolute  good  and  evil.     The  perfect  man 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  379 

is  the  man  whose  nervous  organization  is  perfectly  adapted 
to  surrounding  physical  conditions.  He  is  sensitive  flesh 
and  blood  alone,  and  not  spirit.  Morality  is  the  irrespon- 
sible result  of  physico-organic  evolution,  not  the  self- 
sustaining  work,  as  it  is  the  self-imposed  requirement,  of 
the  ideal,  true  man.  To  the  true,  spiritual  man,  endowed 
with  conscience  {i.e.  with  substantive  self-consciousness, 
the  consciousness  of  the  true  nature  of  the  real,  vital,  but 
for  Spencer  "unknowable"  and  practically  illusory,  self, 
and  of  the  law  which  must  be  followed  in  order  to  be  true 
to  it)  and  an  energetic  will  thoroughly  under  the  control 
of  conscience,  and  living  at  any  incomplete  stage  in  the 
general  history  of  evolution  (now,  for  example),  life 
would  be  "wearisome"  (i.e.  painful),  and  "in  so  far 
wrong."  Nay,  it  must  speedily  result  in  "death  of  self, 
or  posterity,  or  both."  But  what?  Of  the  true  self,  or 
only  of  the  present  physical  integument  of  self  ?  Of  the 
latter  only,  which,  with  the  physiologically  determined, 
sensitive  consciousness  connected  with  it,  is  the  only  self 
that  Mr.  Spencer's  ethics  contemplates.  The  man  whose 
morality  is  in  advance  of  his  time  {i.e.  in  advance  of  the 
general  stage  of  evolution  reached  in  his  time)  is  to  be 
held,  for  the  reasons  just  mentioned,  to  live  to  no  pur- 
pose. Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  such  a  man.  Indeed  the 
christian  centuries  have  held  that  —  irrespective  of  any 
theories  respecting  the  comparative  evolution  of  his  ner- 
vous organization  —  he  lived  a  life  of  such  absolute  truth 
to  the  real,  living,  super-physical  self  as  to  become  the 
sole  historic  illustration  of  the  perfect  man.  The  result 
was  that  "death  of  self"  of  which  Mr.  Spencer  speaks. 
Yet  he  lived  to  greater  purpose  than  any  other  before  or 
since  his  time,  and  he  furnishes  the  most  typical  instance 


880  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

of  the  reality  of  the  ("unknowable")  ideal  as  —  not  an 
inscrutable  "force" — but  a  true,  intelligible,  spiritual 
power  to  shape  and  mould  a  world's  destinies. 

I  have  said  that  in  Mr.  Spencer's  ethics,  as  in  his 
psychology,  the  "real,  synthetic,  vital,"  which  for  him 
is  professedly  the  unknowable,  is  recognized  in  terms 
and  then  really  explained  away  by  identification  with 
the  phenomenal.  The  real  in  mind  we  found  exhibited 
in  synthetic,  ideal  functions.  The  real  in  morality  in- 
volves just  such  functions.  They  are  all  well  summed 
up  (by  implication)  in  the  word  "purpose."  A  strictly 
moral  act  is  purposed,  intended.  Moral  energy  manifests 
itself  in  the  realization  of  definite  purposes.  Moral 
purpose  implies  a  "looking  before"  to  an  ideal  end,  the 
accomplishment  of  which  is  recognized  as  a  duty  (or,  in 
perfected  morality,  as  a  privilege).  This  ideal  anticipa- 
tion and  recognition  is  a  synthetic  intellectual  func- 
tion; the  practical  realization  of  the  conceived  purpose 
is  an  active  moral  function.  All  this  is  more  or  less 
explicitly  recognized  by  Mr.  Spencer  in  terms,  but  in 
the  practical  development  of  his  views  completely  dis- 
appears from  sight,  being  merged  in  something  other 
than  itself.  The  ethical  is  held  not  to  be  intrinsically 
differentiated  from  the  non-ethical.  The  transition  from 
the  latter  to  the  former  is  "gradual" — the  same  thing 
which,  in  the  "Psychology,"  was  affirmed  of  the  transi- 
tion from  the  simple  nervous  shock  to  the  "  most  tran- 
scendent" functions  of  intelligence.  In  other  words, 
the  transition  is  no  transition.  The  higher  is  at  most 
but  a  compound  or  complex  repetition  of  the  lower.  It 
18  snbsfantialli/  identical  with  the  lower — just  as,  for 
example,  relation  was  identical  with  the  elementary  unit 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  381 

of  feeling ;  and  the  result,  with  reference  to  ethical  ideas, 
is  the  same  in  kind  which  we  witnessed  in  connection 
with  Mr.  Spencer's  treatment  of  the  "relational,"  they 
are  not  explained,  but'  explained  away.  Ethics  is  de- 
fined as  a  part  of  the  theory  of  conduct  in  general,  and 
conduct  '-'excludes  purposeless  actions."  Conduct  is 
"either  acts  adjusted  to  ends,  or  the  adjustment  of 
acts  to  ends;  according  as  we  contemplate  the  formed 
body  of  acts,  or  think  of  the  form  alone."  Here  ideal 
purpose  becomes  at  -  once  identical  with  mechanical, 
matter-of-fact  adjustment,  and  Mr.  Spencer's  allegation, 
that  "  Conduct  in  general"  is  "thus  distinguished  from 
the  somewhat  larger  whole  constituted  by  actions  in 
general,"  is  left,  necessarily,  without  proof.  The  notion 
of  purpose,  as  pointing  to  the  effective  and  independent 
agency  of  an  ideal,  self-centered,  personal  and  spiritual 
power,  is  wholly  eliminated.  (^"Conduct"  is  a  mechanical 
process,  the  compulsory  outcome  of  past,  evolutionary 
conduct.J  Ethics  has  a  "physical,  biological,  psycho- 
logical, and  sociological "  aspect,  and  all  these  aspects  are 
phenomenological  incidents  in  the  progress  of  physical 
evolution.  But  it  has  no  peculiar  or  specific  aspect  of 
its  own,  and  "can  find  its  ultimate  [sfc]  interpretations 
only  in  those  fundamental  truths  {^?  facts  of  appearance] 
which  are  common  to  all  of"  the  aspects  named.  This 
is  equivalent  to  saying  that  ethics  has,  in  common  with 
all  other  topics  of  inquiry  concerning  things  or  beings 
in  the  physical  universe,  a  physico-scientific  side  (which 
is  perfectly  true),  and  that  while,  abstractly  considered, 
it  must  be  admitted  to  have  a  philosophic,  or  real  and 
vital  and  commanding,  side,  this  is  unknowable  for  us, 
and  must  be  left  out  of  the  account,  while  we  pay  our 


382  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

exclusive  attention  and  allow  our  final  convictions  to 
be  determined  by  exclusive  reference  to  the  scientific 
side  (which  is  gratuitously  false  —  being  an  extra-scientific, 
negatively  "philosophic,"  dogmatic  assumption.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  that  philosophic  truth,  as  truth 
grounded  in  the  most  profoundly  real,  rational,  vital 
experience,  is  so  "unknowable"  to  Mr.  Spencer,  that, 
just  as,  in  psychology,  conceptions  other  than  his  own 
must  be  held  due,  not  to  reasoned  and  experimental 
conviction,  but  to  "ancient  or  mediaeval  bias,"  so,  in 
ethics,  whatever  is  not  of  physical  or  scientific  "knowl- 
edge" [or  pseudo-philosophical  assertion]  is  a  matter  of 
unreasoned  "creeds,"  of  inscrutable  and  arbitary  "revela- 
tion," or  of  unbridled  fancy,  and  is  "bequeathed"  to  us 
from  a  "past"  epoch,  within  and  since  which,  it  is  true, 
many  fundamental  ideas  are  admitted  to  have  undergone 
no  historic  evolution  or  change,  but  which  is  nevertheless 
for  some  indefinable  reason  worthy  only  of  distrust,  if 
not  of  contempt.  As  though  ethical  philosophy  had 
never  existed,  and  had  never  had  a  rational  justification  ! 
As  though  Kant,  for  example,  had  never  lived  and 
spoken!  And  as  though  inan  were  not  —  not  only  an 
historic,  but  also — a  present  reality,  possessing  in  his 
own  living  spirit  an  unchanging  and  inexhaustible  source 
of  ultra-phenomenal  truth  —  at  least,  concerning  himself!) 
What  is  insufficient  and  false  about  Mr.  Spencer's 
ethics  is,  therefore,  not  any  genuinely  scientific,  or,  if  you 
please,  evolutionary  element  which  may  be  in  it,  but  the 
treatment  of  this  element  as  though  it  concealed,  instead 
of,  in  its  real  and  due  measure,  revealing  the  super-phe- 
nomenal (or  super-scientific),  philosophic  element,  the 
element    of  vital,  self-luminous   (because    rational  and 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  383 

spiritual)  reality,  the  object  of  living  and  hence  spiritual 
self-consciousness.  The  consequence  of  this  error  is  the 
contemplation  of  man,  in  common  with  the  whole  uni- 
verse, as  the  subject  and  scene  only  of  purely  mechanical, 
automatic,  irresponsible  and  unreasoned  processes.  The 
special  source  of  the  error,  as  it  regards  the  treatment  of 
ethics,  is  found  in  Mr.  Spencer's  psychology,  where  per- 
sonality is  eliminated  as  inscrutable  and,  therefore,  p_rgcti- 
cally  unreal  (and  in  its  place  is  substituted,  as  before 
noted,  the  "aggregate  of  feelings  and  ideas,  actual  and 
nascent,"  which  exists  at  each  moment),  and  where  free- 
dom, the  immediate,  conscious  attribute  of  personality,  is 
consequently  denied.  Such  elimination,  substitution  and 
denial  are  purely  arbitrary.  They  are  neither  required 
nor  justified  by  pure  science,^  and  are  in  direct  contradic- 
tion with  experimental  truth.  They  are  part  and  parcel 
of  a  pure  prejudice,  of  a  gratuitous  predetermination  to 
regard  the  knowable  universe  of  being  under  the  one  cat- 
egory of  mechanism. 

This  category  presents  itself  in  thought  at  once  upon 
looking  at  the  whole  field,  or  at  any  portion  of  the  field, 
of  phenomena,  as  such,  and  exclusively.  What  is  there 
viewed  is  simply  isolable,  opaque,  surface /ac/s  of  "motion 
and  configuration"  (in  the  language  of  Professor  Clerk 
Maxwell),  together  with  their  matter-of-fact  order  of  co- 
existence and  sequence.  The  truth  which  explains  them 
is  not  identical  with  the  facts  themselves,  nor  with  the 
laws  of  their  order  (which  "laws"  are  nothing  more  than 
a  convenient  summing  up  of  the  facts  themselves).  Mr. 
Spencer  finds  this  "  truth"  in  an  impenetrable  "  Force  "  or 
(as  he  alleges)  contradictory  "First  Cause."  It  is  not 
contained  in  the  laws  of  these  facts  that  they  are  auto- 


384  BRITISH   THOUGHT   AND  THINKERS. 

matic,  blindly  self-determiniug,  and  withdrawn  from  the 
control  (or  better,  not  instancing  the  present  activity)  of 
rational  power.  This  may  be  the  first  appearance  to  us  ; 
this  may  be  the  first  interpretation  which  we  place  upon 
the  facts.  But  in  thus  interpreting  them  according  to 
first  appearance  we  are  going  behind  the  facts  themselves, 
and  this,  too,  not  with  the  aid  of  reasoned,  philosophical 
insight,  nor  with  the  authority  of  science,  but  on  the  un- 
trustworthy wings  of  a  rude  imagination.  This  is  not 
science,  but  anthropomorphism,  and  anthropomorphism 
in  the  most  superficial  sense  of  this  term.  It  is  of  this 
that  Mr.  Spencer  is  unquestionably  guilty.  And  this  fault 
coheres  with  his  definition  of  true  causation,  whether  in 
'*mind"  or  in  "matter,"  as  the  operation  of  inscrutable, 
hence  non-rational,  non-spiritual,  wholly  unintelligible 
power  or  "force"  —  an  efficient  Naught,  as  empty  of 
significance  or  of  reality  as  its  anthropomorphic  synonym, 
Fate. 

Positive,  afiirmative,  reasoned  philosophy,  resting  on 
the  only  true  substantive  experiejice  (=  etymologically, 
trial,  proving)  possible  for  man,  is  also  guilty  (?)  of  anthro- 
pomorphism, but  in  a  higher,  nay,  the  highest  sense  of 
this  expression.  Of  this  it  is  neither  ashamed  nor 
vain.  It  is  impelled  to  it  by  the  logic  of  (not  phenomena 
alone,  but)  reality.  It,  too,  looks  upon  all  causation  as 
the  operation  of  power  —  but  not  simply  of  power  in 
name  (whence  termed  unknowable),  but  of  real,  known, 
intelligible,  and  hence  rational,  spiritual,  power.  It,  too, 
admits  necessity;  not,  however,  the  necessity  of  fate,  but 
the  necessity  of  the  Best.  It  not  only  recognizes,  but 
glories  in,  scientific  law  (be  this  properly  termed  Evolu- 
tion, or  something  else),  because  it  sees  in  this  the  finger 


HERBERT   SPENCER.  385 

of  intelligence  working  toward  an  intelligible,  rational, 
"divine  event,"  the  manifestation  of  tlie  Good.  It  be- 
lieves in  "invariable  and  universal  law,"  in  every  sense  in 
which  this  expression  is  capable  of  rational  or  really  sci- 
entific significance,  because  it  recognizes,  in  the  power 
which  sustains  it,  unvarying  (because  perfect)  and  univer- 
sal reason  and  goodness.  But  it  does  not  believe  that 
descriptive  law  (the  only  sort  known  to  exact  science), 
because  observable  in  the  phenomenal  results  of  all  activi- 
ties, whether  divine  or  human,  is  a  fatalistic,  iron  power 
to  determine,  as  by  constraint,  the  order  of  those  activi- 
ties. It  believes  in  mechanism,  first,  because  it  witnesses 
mechanism  as  a  phenomenal  fact;  and,  secondly,  because 
it  sees  in  it  the  necessary  means,  or  instrument,  through 
which  the  unchanging  ends  of  perfect  reason,  perfect 
spirit,  perfect  good  must  be  reached.  But  it  does  not 
\  commit  the  absurdity  of  supposing  that  the  instrument 
\  practically  creates  itself  and  is  subservient  to  the  ends 
\  which  are  accomplished  through  it,  simply  by  accident. 
'  As  the  characteristic  essence  of  man  it  recognizes  a  true, 
\  self-centred,  spiritual,  potential  personality  —  at  once  self- 
illumining,  because  rational,  and  also  illumined  through 
its  kinship  and  vitally  dependent  relation  to  the  divine 
source  of  all  true,  and  hence  spiritual,  being.  Through 
his  vital  self-consciousness  (which,  on  the  moral  side,  is 
conscience)  philosophy  insists  that  man  is  placed  in 
immediate  —  not  sensible,  but  intelligible — relation  to 
the  root  of  his  real  being  and,  pro  tanto,  to  the  ultimate 
nature  of  universal  being.  In  this  dynamic,  essentially 
living  (not  "biological  ")  consciousness  are  given  immu- 
table norms  of  thought  and  of  moral  judgment,  whose  vital 
power  is  exhibited  in  all  men  (and  even,  mutatis  mutan- 
17 


386  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

dis,  in  the  whole  physical  universe  without  restriction),  but 
of  which  many  may  not  be  explicitly  conscious,  and  which 
many  may  deny  in  terms,  though  never  wholly  in  prac- 
tice. The  history  of  human  morals  discloses  a  series  of 
variously  successful,  or  unsuccessful,  attempts  to  deter- 
mine how  these  norms  are  in  practice  to  be  applied,  or 
how  men  ought  to  act.  No  system  of  morals  will  ever  be 
able  to  dictate  beforehand  for  every  man  how  he  shall,  in 
each  case,  solve  this  practical  question,  for  the  special 
cases  are  infinitely  numerous,  and  the  determination  how 
one  shall  act  often  permits  only  an  instant's  deliberation. 
And  here  lies  the  place  of  each  man's  own  responsibility, 
the  place  where  his  freedom  is  to  be  realized  and  to  be 
used  as  a  sacred  trust,  and  the  place  where  his  dignity, 
his  worth,  his  real,  ultra-phenomenal,  human  substance 
are  to  be  manifested  and  vindicated.  And  here,  too,  is 
the  place  where  man  finds  his  own  perfect  freedom  in  self- 
imposed  necessity,  in  conscious,  energetic  maintenance,  on 
the  one  hand,  of  the  law  of  his  own  ideal  being,  and,  on 
the  other,  of  the  ideal  law  of  the  universal  Power,  or  of 
God,  which,  as  Providence,  cooperates  with  him  (whether 
according  to  a  "law  of  evolution,"  or  otherwise)  to  sustain 
his  well-directed  efibrts,  or  to  thwart  them  if  ill-directed, 
and  to  bring  forth  the  fruits  of  universal  good.  This 
"anthropomorphism"  is  of  the  true  kind.  It  gives  to 
man  the  true  "  form  of  man,"  as  he  is  immediately  known 
(not  sensibly  felt),  as  he  is  in  his  ever-present  reality,  and 
not  simply  as  a  phenomenon.  And  in  interpreting  reality 
universally,  or  absolutely,  after  the  same  type ;  in  other 
words,  in  proclaiming  divine  Spirit,  God,  as  the  king  and 
fount  of  being,  it  proceeds  according  to  the  rational  neces- 
sities of  thought,  or  according  to  the  rational  necessities 


HEKBERT   SPENCER.  387 

of  the  problem  itself.  The  Absolute  Eeality,  which  is 
in  the  first  instance  the  Unknown,  it  conceives  in  terms 
of  known  reality,  and  finds  that  no  other  procedure  is 
"congruous"  with  all  the  facts  of  man's  nature  and  the 
nature  of  things.  This  procedure,  whereby  not  only  man, 
but  the  whole  universe,  is  placed  in  intelligible  continuity, 
though  not  identity,  with  the  Absolute  Reality,  or  Supreme 
Cause,  is  surely  more  rational  than  to  term  the  latter  un- 
knowable, and  then  to  invest  it  with  irrational  attributes 
of  mechanistic  fate,  of  which,  strictly  speaking,  the  whole 
universe  furnishes  no  scientific  example,  and  for  which 
the  only  warrant  is  the  confessed  "imbecility"  (or  atony) 
of  thought  and  the  undisciplined  flights  of  sensuous  im- 
agination. 

True  philosophy  is  catholic.     It  welcomes  science  as 
in  truth  its  handmaid.     It  reveres  religion,  which  is  but 
the  faithful  love  and  service  of  the  supreme   object  of 
philosophy's  demonstrations.     But  it  insists  that  things 
distinct  shall  not  be  identified  with  each  other,  nor  adul- 
terated by  admixture  of  elements  foreign  to  themselves. 
/     From  this  point  of  view  we  are  certainly  justified  in 
/  insisting,  in  special  behalf  of  British  philosophy,  that  the 
I   coiLp  de  grace  be  at  last  administered  to  the  idea  which 
;   has  so  long  had  all  the  power  of  a  superstition,  that  so- 
\  called   empirical,  phenomenally  descriptive,   sensational, 
I  or  pliysiological  psychology,  or  that  physical  science,  be 
,  its    highest    law   evolution   or  gravitation,   is,   as  such, 
j  either  philosophy  or  any  specific  part  of  philosophy,  or 
j  has  any  competence  whatever  to  answer,  even  negatively, 
philosophical   questions.     Its  only  proper  attitude  with 
I  reference  to  such  questions  is  that  of  the  pure  geologist, 
for  example,  with  reference  to  problems  (we  will  say)  in 


388  BRITISH  THOUGHT  AND  THINKERS. 

political  economy.  Questioned  with  regard  to  these,  he 
will,  speaking  as  a  geologist,  simply  say,  "  I  know  noth- 
ing about  them."  British  promoters  of  physiological 
psychology,  assthetics,  ethics,  etc.,  whom  the  nature  of  the 
case  does  not  instruct  to  this  efifect,  may,  let  us  hope,  be 
led  to  pause  and  reflect,  when  the  greatest  living  leader  in 
their  line  of  scientific  inquiry.  Prof.  Wundt,  enforces  (in 
his  Logik,  1880)  this  view  in  language  too  forcible  to  be 
mistaken  or,  one  would  suppose,  unheeded,  and,  more, 
urges,  as  the  conception  of  the  universe  to  which  the 
philosophical  interpretation  of  science  inclines  with  the 
force  of  overwhelming  probability,  a  conception  generic- 
ally  identical  with  the  one  which  has  just  been  set  forth. 
Let  science  grow,  by  all  means,  conquering  the  realm 
of  changing  phenomena,  and  ensuring  to  man  the  empire 
/'  of  physical  nature.  But  let  not  this  kind  of  knowledge 
obscure  for  us  —  what  it  can  never  change  —  the  immu- 
table pillars  of  vital  reality  and  everlasting  truth. 


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